He says he ought to have run away
from home. But what good could he have done if he had? He would have
been caught, brought back and examined two days later instead of two
days earlier. A boy of barely sixteen cannot stand against the moral
pressure of a father and mother who have always oppressed him any more
than he can cope physically with a powerful full-grown man. True, he
may allow himself to be killed rather than yield, but this is being so
morbidly heroic as to come close round again to cowardice; for it is
little else than suicide, which is universally condemned as cowardly.
On the re-assembling of the school it became apparent that something
had gone wrong. Dr. Skinner called the boys together, and with much
pomp excommunicated Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Jones, by declaring their
shops to be out of bounds. The street in which the "Swan and Bottle"
stood was also forbidden. The vices of drinking and smoking,
therefore, were clearly aimed at, and before prayers Dr. Skinner spoke
a few impressive words about the abominable sin of using bad language.
Ernest's feelings can be imagined.
Next day at the hour when the daily punishments were read out,
though there had not yet been time for him to have offended, Ernest
Pontifex was declared to have incurred every punishment which the
school provided for evil-doers.
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