Page 99 - of-human-bondage-

masters possessed to cane boys on the hand was taken away
from them, and Squirts could no longer emphasize his an-
ger by beating his desk with the cane. He never did more
now than take a boy by the shoulders and shake him. He
still made a naughty or refractory lad stand with one arm
stretched out for anything from ten minutes to half an hour,
and he was as violent as before with his tongue.
No master could have been more unfitted to teach things
to so shy a boy as Philip. He had come to the school with
fewer terrors than he had when first he went to Mr. Wat-
son’s. He knew a good many boys who had been with him at
the preparatory school. He felt more grownup, and instinc-
tively realised that among the larger numbers his deformity
would be less noticeable. But from the first day Mr. Gordon
struck terror in his heart; and the master, quick to discern
the boys who were frightened of him, seemed on that ac-
count to take a peculiar dislike to him. Philip had enjoyed
his work, but now he began to look upon the hours passed
in school with horror. Rather than risk an answer which
might be wrong and excite a storm of abuse from the mas-
ter, he would sit stupidly silent, and when it came towards
his turn to stand up and construe he grew sick and white
with apprehension. His happy moments were those when
Mr. Perkins took the form. He was able to gratify the pas-
sion for general knowledge which beset the headmaster; he
had read all sorts of strange books beyond his years, and
often Mr. Perkins, when a question was going round the
room, would stop at Philip with a smile that filled the boy
with rapture, and say:

Of Human Bondage