The prefects gave him a good many “prefects’ lickings” on various pretexts, but they never made him cry even, let alone break down the wall between his inner aliveness and their thorough manliness. He got a very bad report that term, and no remove. For which he was duly lectured and reprimanded. As the bullyingly urbane Head reproved, did he know that the sullen, rather hard-faced boy in front of him was not listening, was silently reciting to himself the Ode to a Nightingale, as a kind of inner Declaration of Independence? “Magic casements”—that was when you opened the window wide at sunset to listen to the birds, or at night-time to look at the stars, or first thing in the morning to smell the fresh sunlight and watch the leaves glittering. “If you go on like this, Winterbourne, you will disgrace yourself, your parents, your House and your School. You take little or no interest in the School life, and your Games record is abominable. Your set-captain tells me that you have cut Games ten times this term, and your Form Master reports that you have over a thousand lines of impositions yet to work off. Your conduct with regard to the O.T.C. was contemptible and unmanly to a degree we have never experienced in _this_ School. I am also told that you are ruining your health with secret abominable practices against which I warned you—unavailingly I fear—at the time I endeavoured to prepare you for Confirmation and Holy Communion. I notice that you have only once taken Communion since your Confirmation, although more than six months have passed. What you do when you cut Games and go running off to your home, I do not know. It cannot be anything good.” (Magic casements, opening on the foam—) “It would pain me to have to ask your parents to remove you from the School, but we want no wasters and sneaks here. Most, indeed all, your fellow boys are fine manly fellows; and you have the excellent example of your House Prefects before you. Why can you not imitate them? What nonsense have you got into your head? Speak out, and tell me plainly. Have you entangled yourself in any way?” No answer. “What do you do in your spare time?” No answer. “Your obstinate silence gives me the right to suspect the worst. _What_ you do I can imagine, but prefer not to mention. Now, for the last time, will you speak out honourably and manfully, and tell me what it is you do that makes you neglect your work and Games and makes you conspicuous in the School for sullen and obstinate behaviour?” No answer. “Very well. You will receive twelve strokes from the birch. Bend over.” George’s face quivered, but he had not shed a tear or made a sound, as he turned silently to go. “Stop. Kneel down at that chair, and we will pray together that this lesson may be of service to you, and that you may conquer your evil habits. Let us together pray GOD that He will have Mercy upon you, and make you into a really manly fellow.” They prayed.