“That’s true,” assented Hurst. “No, it won’t do to go in for beating; might break his bones, or something. I can’t think what’s the good of those delicate ones putting themselves into a school of this sort. A parson’s is the place for them; eight gentlemanly pupils, treated as a private family, with a mild usher, and a lady to teach the piano.” The council burst into a laugh at Hurst’s mocking tones, and Pierce senior interrupted it. “I don’t see why he shouldn’t--” “Say she, Pierce,” corrected Mark Galloway. “She, then. I don’t see why she shouldn’t get a beating if she deserves it; it will teach her not to try her tricks on again. Let her be delicate; she’ll feel it the more.” “It’s all bosh about his being delicate. She’s not,” vehemently interrupted Tod Yorke, somewhat perplexed, in his hurry, with the genders. “Charley Channing’s no more delicate than we are. It’s all in the look. As good say that detestable little villain, Boulter, is delicate, because he has yellow curls. I vote for the beating.” “I’ll vote you out of the business, if you show insubordination, Mr. Tod,” cried Bywater. “We’ll pay out Miss Charley in some way, but it shan’t be by beating him.” “Couldn’t we lock him up in the cloisters, as we locked up Ketch, and that lot; and leave him there all night?” proposed Berkeley. “But there’d be getting the keys?” debated Mark Galloway. “As if we couldn’t get the keys if we wanted them!” scoffingly retorted Bywater. “We did old Ketch the other time, and we could do him again. _That_ would not serve the young one out, locking him up in the cloisters.” “Wouldn’t it, though!” said Tod Yorke. “He’d be dead of fright before morning, he’s so mortally afraid of ghosts.” “Afraid of what?” cried Bywater. “Of ghosts. He’s a regular coward about them. He dare not go to bed in the dark for fear of their coming to him. He’d rather have five and twenty pages of Virgil to do, than he’d be left alone after nightfall.” The notion so tickled Bywater, that he laughed till he was hoarse. Bywater could not understand being afraid of “ghosts.” Had Bywater met a whole army of ghosts, the encounter would only have afforded him pleasure. “There never was a ghost seen yet, as long as any one can remember,” cried he, when he came out of his laughter. “I’d sooner believe in Gulliver’s travels, than I’d believe in ghosts. What a donkey you are, Tod Yorke!” “It’s Charley Channing that’s the donkey; not me,” cried Tod, fiercely. “I tell you, if we locked him up here for a night, we should find him dead in the morning, when we came to let him out. Let’s do it.” “What, to find him dead in the morning!” exclaimed Hurst. “You are a nice one, Tod!” “Oh, well, I don’t mean altogether dead, you know,” acknowledged Tod. “But he’d have had a mortal night of it! All his clothes gummed together from fright, I’ll lay.”