He read contempt in every glance, and by degrees he developed a temper that was checked only by the humiliating consciousness of his physical inferiority.  After nearly five years in school, he was still one of the smallest boys in height and bodily development, and neither gymnastics nor the military drill that became compulsory in the sixth grade had the slightest effect on him.  And, of course, he suffered the more from it because he ascribed his lack of stature and muscle to what he had now begun to think of as his own moral weakness.

A petty quarrel one day brought on another fight with Bauer, and this time right in the class room.  They rolled around on the floor between the desks and separated only when some one cried out that Booklund was coming.  Keith was thoroughly aware of the fact that his classmates regarded their behaviour as inexcusably undignified in pupils of the Lower Sixth, but contrary to custom, he didn’t care very much.  What almost made him cry was that the thought that at the moment of separation Bauer once more was on top of him—­just as when their first fight came to an end five years earlier.  And then Keith was brought still nearer to tears by his disgusted realization of that infantile tendency to cry in every moment of unusual strain.

But, of course, how could he expect anything else?

His whole bearing changed gradually.  The gay forwardness that had caused Dally to make fun of him—­and like him, perhaps—­was quite gone, but gone, too, was the shyness that always had run side by side with it.  His most frequent mood was one of irritable rebellion, and in between he would have spells of sulkiness that estranged the teachers and surprised himself in his more wholesome moods.  He snarled to his mother, and he would have done so to his father if he had only dared.

The school seemed sheer torture much of the time, and all its objectionable features seemed to centre in the Latin.  His hatred of that subject approached an obsession.  There was no doubt that Lector Booklund could feel it, and every day he watched Keith with more undisguised hostility.  At last he could not speak to the boy without losing his temper, and so for days at a time he would not speak to him at all.  At such times Keith’s state of mind presented a riddle hard to solve.  He posed to himself and others as tremendously gratified at being left alone and not having to answer any bothersome questions.  Inwardly, however, he was more hurt and offended by that neglect than by any other rebuke the teacher could have devised.

Such a period of suspended communication had lasted more than a week, when, at the wane of the term, the inevitable explosion finally occurred.

XIX

The class had just turned in their copybooks with a Latin exercise prepared at home.  Lector Booklund was standing at his desk with the whole pile in front of him.  Keith’s book happened to be on top.  The teacher opened it.  He sent a glance at Keith that made the boy squirm.  Then, as his eyes ran down the page, his face turned almost purple.  Suddenly he raised the book over his head and threw it on the floor with such force that the cover was torn off.