United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Something has been proposed to me," said Hilliard, at length, leaning forward with his elbows upon the table. "I mentioned that our friend Birching is an architect. He's in partnership with his brother, a much older man. Well, they nave offered to take me into their office if I pay a premium of fifty guineas. As soon as I can qualify myself to be of use to them, they'll give me a salary.
By the end of the morning he had accumulated in all three hundred lines from various sources for ragging. "That man, Caruthers, is some fellow," said Ferguson to Simonds at lunch. "He looks as if he enjoyed being in rows." "Perhaps he does," was the answer. "He is certainly always doing his best to get into them. But he is in for a birching this time." But Simonds was wrong.
"Why, he does nothing but birch! A fellow can na say his 'sum, es, est' without catching it. And as for getting through the 'genitivo' and 'vocativo' without a downright threshing " He shrugged his shoulders ruefully as he remembered his unlearned lesson. Everything had gone wrong with him that morning, and the thought of the birching that he was sure to get was more than he could bear.
The rooms were full of politicians and their wives, of members just arrived from the House, of Ministers smiling at each other with lifted eyebrows, like boys escaped from a birching. A tempest of talk surged through the rooms talk concerned with all manner of great issues, with the fate of a Government, the rousing of a country, the fortunes of individual statesmen.
He had always heard and believed that the English were mad, and now he knew it. As a punishment for murder he had got a birching that merely tickled him, and a free ticket to seven years' board, lodging, clothing, lighting, medical care, instruction and diversion! Wow!
"He will be here in an hour's time," said Hamish. "I knew you would wish to see him, and I requested him to come." "The worst feature of the whole," put in Judith, with as much acrimony as ever was displayed by Mr. Ketch, "is that them boys should not have got their deserts. They have not as much as had a birching; and I say that the college masters ought to be hooted. I'd 'ghost' 'em!"
I believe he could sit down and draw to scale a front elevation of any great cathedral in Europe couldn't you, Hilliard?" Laughing the joke aside, Hilliard looked with interest at Mr. Birching, and began to talk with him.
They had just been convicted afresh of smoking, which is bad for little boys who use plug-tobacco, and Lew's contention was that Jakin had "stunk so 'orrid bad from keepin' the pipe in pocket," that he and he alone was responsible for the birching they were both tingling under. "I tell you I 'id the pipe back o' barricks," said Jakin, pacifically. "You're a bloomin' liar," said Lew, without heat.
Word Of The Day