TOM BROWN'S
badly scorched, and part of his trousers burned through. But soon he is in bed with cold bandages. At first he feels broken, and thinks of writing home and getting taken away; and the verse of a hymn he had learned years ago sings through his head, and he goes to sleep, murmuring:
"Where the wicked cease from troubling,
And the weary are at rest."
But after a sound night's rest the old boy-spirit comes back again. East comes in reporting that the whole house is with him, and he forgets everything except their old resolve, never to be beaten by that bully Flashman.
Not a word could the housekeeper extract from either of them, and though the Doctor knew all that she knew that morning, he never knew any more.
I trust and believe that such scenes are not possible now at school, and that lotteries and betting-books have gone out; but I am writing of schools as they were in our time, and must give the evil with the good.
