[12 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]

As for Master Verdant, he was only too glad at his mother's decision,
for he partook of all her alarm about public schools, though from a
different cause. It was not very often that he visited at the
Rectory during Master Charley's holidays; but when he did, that young
gentleman favoured him with such accounts of the peculiar knack the
second master possessed of finding out all your tenderest places when
he "licked a feller" for a false quantity, "that, by Jove! you couldn't
sit down for a fortnight without squeaking;" and of the jolly mills
they used to have with the town cads, who would lie in wait for you,
and half kill you if they caught you alone; and of the fun it was to
make a junior form fag for you, and do all your dirty work; - that
Master Verdant's hair would almost stand on end at such horrors, and
he would gasp for very dread lest such should ever be ~his~ dreadful
doom.

And then Master Charley would take a malicious pleasure in consoling
him, by saying, "Of course, you know, you'll only have to fag for the
first two or three years; then - if you get into the fourth form -
you'll be able to have a fag for yourself. And it's awful fun, I can
tell you, to see the way some of the fags get riled at cricket! You
get a feller to give you a few balls, just for practice, and you hit
the ball into another feller's ground; and then you tell your fag to
go and pick it up. So he goes to do it, when the other feller sings
out, 'Don't touch that ball, or I'll lick you!' So you tell the fag
to come to you, and you say, 'Why don't you do as I tell you?' And he
says, 'Please, sir!' and then the little beggar blubbers. So you say
to him, 'None of that, sir! Touch your toes!' We always make 'em wear
straps on purpose. And then his trousers go tight and beautiful, and