She knew by now her enemies in the class. The one she hated most was Williams. He was a sort of defective, not bad enough to be so classed. He could read with fluency, and had plenty of cunning intelligence. But he could not keep still. And he had a kind of sickness very repulsive to a sensitive girl, something cunning and etiolated and degenerate. Once he had thrown an ink-well at her, in one of his mad little rages. Twice he had run home out of class. He was a well-known character. And he grinned up his sleeve at this girl-teacher, sometimes hanging round her to fawn on her. But this made her dislike him more. He had a kind of leech-like power. From one of the children she took a supple cane, and this she determined to use when real occasion came. One morning, at composition, she said to the boy Williams: “Why have you made this blot?” “Please, miss, it fell off my pen,” he whined out, in the mocking voice that he was so clever in using. The boys near snorted with laughter. For Williams was an actor, he could tickle the feelings of his hearers subtly. Particularly he could tickle the children with him into ridiculing his teacher, or indeed, any authority of which he was not afraid. He had that peculiar gaol instinct. “Then you must stay in and finish another page of composition,” said the teacher. This was against her usual sense of justice, and the boy resented it derisively. At twelve o’clock she caught him slinking out. “Williams, sit down,” she said. And there she sat, and there he sat, alone, opposite to her, on the back desk, looking up at her with his furtive eyes every minute. “Please, miss, I’ve got to go an errand,” he called out insolently. “Bring me your book,” said Ursula. The boy came out, flapping his book along the desks. He had not written a line. “Go back and do the writing you have to do,” said Ursula. And she sat at her desk, trying to correct books. She was trembling and upset. And for an hour the miserable boy writhed and grinned in his seat. At the end of that time he had done five lines. “As it is so late now,” said Ursula, “you will finish the rest this evening.” The boy kicked his way insolently down the passage. The afternoon came again. Williams was there, glancing at her, and her heart beat thick, for she knew it was a fight between them. She watched him. During the geography lesson, as she was pointing to the map with her cane, the boy continually ducked his whitish head under the desk, and attracted the attention of other boys. “Williams,” she said, gathering her courage, for it was critical now to speak to him, “what are you doing?” He lifted his face, the sore-rimmed eyes half smiling. There was something intrinsically indecent about him. Ursula shrank away. “Nothing,” he replied, feeling a triumph. “What are you doing?” she repeated, her heart-beat suffocating her. “Nothing,” replied the boy, insolently, aggrieved, comic.