was coming down. So, his licking over, he got stiffy up and with his eyes full of tears but still with a smile, went back to bed. At any rate he knew now exactly what one had to do and exactly how much it hurt.
So, the punishments of the evening finished, they began to talk. But as ten and half-past ten and eleven chimed from the neighbouring church, one after another dropped off, while even the three or four who still remained awake, would speak at intervals which grew longer and longer every time until the last, finding he could get no better answer to what he said than a drowsy grunt, would give it up as a bad job, turn on his side and address himself also to sleep. It was quite a new pleasure for Jaspar, this, of lying in bed and listening to voices whose owners were as invisible as if they had not existed at all, coming now from this corner of the room and now from that; and then, too, the darkness somehow appeared to him to suit the things they said and to give them a curious and delightfully troubling effect that was altogether wanting by day. At first, of course, he had never ventured to interrupt, but by and by, as he began to feel himself more at home, from time to time he would stop them to ask for an explanation of some word or other, at whose meaning his ignorance could do no more than dimly guess. But instead of answering they only laughed at him for being so green or perhaps—and that was worse—would make some reply which, at the moment accepted in good faith, he would discover afterwards to have been intended merely to stuff him up.
‘But you said it was!’ he would cry.
‘Did I?’ the other would answer with a careless air. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it must have been over the left!’
And all this time he was deriving no little satisfaction from the thought that not only did he take his lickings better than any of the rest, but that the fact of his doing so was recognised, and had indeed already won him quite a reputation for endurance and pluck. He only hoped that Orr had noticed it too. He would gladly have suffered a hundred times more to have gained the approval of one who was so tall and strong and
