Winning His Way | Page 6

master without a line effaced.
"Giving your attention to drawing, are you, Master Paul?" said Cipher.
His eyes flashed. He knit his brows. The blood rushed to his cheeks.
There was a popping up of heads all over the school-room to get a sight
of the picture.
The boys laughed aloud, and there was a tittering among the girls,
which made Cipher very angry. "Silence!" he roared, and stamped upon
the floor so savagely that the windows rattled. "Come out here, sir. I'll

give you a drawing-lesson of another sort." He seized Paul by the collar,
and threw him into the space in front of his own desk. "Hold out your
hand."
Paul felt that he was about to receive a tremendous thrashing; but he
determined that he would not flinch. He held out his right hand, and
received the blow from a heavy ferule. His hand felt as if he had been
struck by a piece of hot iron.
"The other, sir."
Whack! it fell, a blow which made the flesh purple. There was an Oh!
upon his tongue; but he set his teeth together, and bit his lips till they
bled, and so smothered it. Another blow,--another,--another. They were
hard to bear; but his teeth were set like a vice. There was a twitching of
the muscles round his lips; he was pale. When the blows fell, he held
his breath, but did not snivel.
"I'll see if I can't bring you to your feeling, you good-for-nothing
scapegrace," said the master, mad with passion, and surprised that Paul
made no outcry. He gave another round, bringing the ferule down with
great force. Blood began to ooze from the pores. The last blow
spattered the drops around the room. Cipher came to his senses. He
stopped.
"Are you sorry, sir?"
"I don't know whether I am or not. I didn't mean any harm. I suppose I
ought not to have drawn it in school; but I didn't do it to make fun. I
drew you just as you are," said Paul,--his voice trembling a little in
spite of his efforts to control it.
The master could not deny that it was a perfect likeness. He was
surprised at Paul's cleverness at drawing, and for the first time in his
life saw that he cut a ridiculous figure wearing that long, loose,
swallow-tailed coat, with great, flaming brass buttons, and resolved
upon the spot that his next coat should be a frock, and that he would get
a longer pair of pants.

"You may take your seat, sir!" he said, puzzled to know whether to
punish Paul still more, and compel him to say that he was sorry, or
whether to accept the explanations, and apologize for whipping him so
severely.
Paul sat down. His hands ached terribly; but what troubled him most
was the thought that he had been whipped before the whole school. All
the girls had witnessed his humiliation. There was one among
them,--Azalia Adams,--who stood at the head of Paul's class, the best
reader and speller in school. She had ruby lips, and cheeks like roses;
the golden sunlight falling upon her chestnut hair crowned her with
glory; deep, thoughtful, and earnest was the liquid light of her hazel
eyes; she was as lovely and beautiful as the flower whose name she
bore. Paul had drawn her picture many times,--sometimes bending over
her task, sometimes as she sat, unmindful of the hum of voices around
her, looking far away into a dim and distant dream-land. He never
wearied of tracing the features of one so fair and good as she. Her laugh
was as musical as a mountain-brook; and in the church on Sunday,
when he heard her voice sweetly and melodiously mingling with the
choir, he thought of the angels,--of her as in heaven and he on earth.
"Run home, sonny, and tell your marm that you got a licking," said
Philip when school was out.
Paul's face became livid. He would have doubled his fist and given
Philip a blow in the face, but his palms were like puff-balls. There was
an ugly feeling inside, but just then a pair of bright hazel eyes, almost
swimming with tears, looked into his own. "Don't mind it, Paul!" said
Azalia.
The pain was not half so hard to bear after that. He wanted to say, "I
thank you," but did not know how. Till then his lips had hardly
quivered, and he had not shed a tear; now his eyes became moist; one
great drop rolled down his cheek, but he wiped it off with his
coat-sleeve, and turned away, for fear that Azalia would think him a
baby.
On his way home the thought uppermost in his mind was, "What will

mother say?" Why tell her? Would it