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being disturbed; but every evening he made sure his turn would come to get one of the lickings of which Orr scarce ever failed to administer two or three; for nobody escaped altogether except the small boy whom everybody called Els from his initials, so Piggy said, L. C.; though perhaps the one who suffered most was Piggy; and it was easy to see why, for even he himself recognised how very tempting it must be to try the effect upon such a chubby chap as him of the various instruments of punishment, slipper-heels and buckle-ends of braces, backs of brushes, fives-bats, ground-ashes and canes, of all which impartially Orr made use. But he had not been forgotten, for one night after he had been watching Orr lick his Minor and had seen the boy look round and, trying to take it all in good part, exclaim: ‘Oh, please, Major!’ and then at an impatient sign from his brother, turn again, he heard his own name called. He got out of bed and so for a moment stood, feeling very shy and awkward, as not knowing exactly what he ought to do and as being about for the first time to have to let the others see him naked. However he was soon kneeling down—just where a few minutes before he had knelt to say his prayers—and Orr was pulling up his nightshirt and arranging him delicately in the position in which he could be got at best; and then he felt that some one was balancing a book on the small of his back; it was the rule, he knew, that if you wriggled enough to throw it down, Orr always began all over again. Then followed a dreadful pause, and then the leathern brace descended, making him draw in his breath with a sort of hiss, and convulsively straighten his body up against the edge of the bed; he heard the book fall on the floor; somebody laughed; it was replaced, and Orr began again. But this time, not only did he keep himself bravely stuck out, but by dint of biting his nightshirt hard between his teeth, he managed to last to the end without uttering a single sound. It didn’t really hurt so very much when it had once begun; the worst of it was that Orr always waited a little between his strokes, so that each had its full effect and you were kept wondering where the next