When, by these vacillations, he is late for the supper hour, Essie will be at the shop door watching for him. "Well, aren't you half late, though!" cries Essie. "I was jus' goin' to dish up. Oh, you lodgers, you know, you're fair cautions!" "I was kept late," he says. "Well, you weren't half walking slow when you come round the corner, though." She sees his face more clearly in the light of the shop and she says: "Oh, dear, you don't look half tired! My steak-and-kidney pudding, that's what you want! Here he is, Dad! Get his slippers, Mother? That old Whiskyquick's been fair tiring him out!" She runs to the kitchen and in a minute calls out: "All ready? Oh, it's cooked a fair treat!" She bears in the steaming steak-and-kidney pudding, sets it on the table, but stops while above the bubbling crust she poises her knife and watches it with her little twitches of her lips and with her sparkling eyes. "Come, Essie," says Mrs. Bickers. "Oh, isn't it funny, though," says Essie, "all bubbling and squeaking! Let's have a laugh!" CHAPTER IV MARTYRDOM OF MASTER CUPPER I It is by a very surprising and extraordinary event that, from the abyss of wretchedness, irresolution and humiliation of the trial week at Tower House School, Mr. Wriford finds himself lifted to the plane of its extension by week and week of ever increasing stability and assurance; finds himself suiting Mr. Pennyquick; finds himself in a new phase in which there develop new emotions. This event is no less remarkable, no less apparently cataclysmal to his position in the school and to the school itself, than a tremendous box upon the ear which, early in his second week, Mr. Wriford administers to a First Form pupil whose name is Cupper and whose face is fat and dark and cunning. Morning school, very shortly after the Headmaster with a loud "WORK UP!" has left his class "for ten minutes," is the hour of this amazement. A week's experience of the new assistant-master has opened to the pupils unbounded lengths of impertinence and indiscipline to which they can go; and the door has no sooner banged behind Mr. Pennyquick than they proceed to explore them.. A favourite form of this sport is to badger Mr. Wriford with requests, and it is done the more noisily and impertinently by strict observation of the rule established in all schools on the point. At once, that is to say, Mr. Pennyquick having left the room, there uprises a forest of arms, a universal snapping of fingers and thumbs, and a chorus that grows to a babel of: "Please, sir! Please, sir! Please, sir!"