Pastors and Masters

I

“Well, this is a nice thing! A nice thing this schoolmastering! Up at seven, and in a room with a black fire … I should have thought it might have occurred to one out of forty boys to poke it … and hard at work, before other men think it time to be awake! And while you are about it, don’t pile on as much coal as it would take the day’s profits of the school to pay for. And here is a thing I have to see every morning of my life! Here is a thing I have to be degraded by, every morning when I come down to an honest day’s work, a middle-aged man working to support his family! I am surprised to see people with such a want of self-respect. I admit that I am. I would rather see a boy come in roundly late, than slip in on the stroke, half dressed and half asleep, and pass as being in time. It is an ungentlemanly thing to do.”

Mr. Merry, a tall, thin man about fifty, leaned back in his chair, and fixed on his pupils his little, pale, screwed up eyes, to which he had the gift of imparting an alluring kindness. His feelings towards them, affection, disgust, pride and despair, seemed to oust each other over his face.

“Yes, I am sick and tired of this sort of thing. I will not mince matters with you. And get to your seats without upsetting everything on your way, will you please? Oh, who would be a schoolmaster? I should not be doing my duty to you all, if I did not warn you all against it. And I suppose it is a good thing to have the east wind from an east window blowing in upon forty people, thirty-nine of them growing boys, before their breakfast on a March morning? And … one, two, three, four, five, six, seven … it takes eleven boys to shut a window, does it? And I suppose I cannot make a few remarks, without having you all fidgeting and gaping, and behaving like a set of clodhoppers instead of gentlemen? Get to your work at once; and don’t look up again before the gong.”

Mr. Merry gave a gesture of despairing acquiescence, as the boys obeyed this summons without his endorsing it. He followed them down to their basement dining-room.