"I say! Look what he's doing!"

As I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimed
again:

"I say... He's a queer old josser!"

"In case he asks us for our names," I said "let you be Murphy and I'll
be Smith."

We said nothing further to each other. I was still considering
whether I would go away or not when the man came back and sat
down beside us again. Hardly had he sat down when Mahony,
catching sight of the cat which had escaped him, sprang up and
pursued her across the field. The man and I watched the chase. The
cat escaped once more and Mahony began to throw stones at the
wall she had escaladed. Desisting from this, he began to wander
about the far end of the field, aimlessly.

After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was
a very rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. I
was going to reply indignantly that we were not National School
boys to be whipped, as he called it; but I remained silent. He began
to speak on the subject of chastising boys. His mind, as if
magnetised again by his speech, seemed to circle slowly round and
round its new centre. He said that when boys were that kind they
ought to be whipped and well whipped. When a boy was rough and
unruly there was nothing would do him any good but a good sound
whipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear was no good: