The master never interfered, or
only upon the rarest occasions when pressure from without was brought
to bear upon him, as in the case of Juno, with what the boys did out of
school. He was glad enough to accept utter irresponsibility for that
portion of his time; so that between the two parts of the day, as they
passed through the life of the master, there was almost as little
connection as between the waking and sleeping hours of a somnambulist.
But, as he leaned over the rail of the bridge, whither a rare impulse
to movement had driven him, his thoughts had turned upon Alec Forbes
and his antagonism. Out of school, he could not help feeling that the
boy had not been very far wrong, however subversive of authority his
behaviour had been; but it was not therefore the less mortifying to
think how signally he had been discomfited by him. And he was compelled
moreover to acknowledge to himself that it was a mercy that Alec was
not the boy to follow up his advantage by heading--not a party against
the master, but the whole school, which would have been ready enough to
follow such a victorious leader. So there was but one way of setting
matters right, as Mr Malison had generosity enough left in him to
perceive; and that was, to make a friend of his adversary.
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