They would have been ashamed of it before they came to Roslyn school, but the commonness of the habit had now made them blind or indifferent to its meanness.

It was peculiarly bad in the fourth form, because the master treated them with implicit confidence, and being scrupulously honorable himself, was unsuspicious of others.

He was therefore extremely indignant at this apparent discovery of an attempt to overreach him in a boy so promising and so much of a favorite as Eric Williams.
"Hold out your hand," he repeated.
Eric did so, and the cane tingled sharply across his palm.

He could bear the pain well enough, but he was keenly alive to the disgrace; he, a boy at the head of his form, to be caned in this way by a man who didn't understand him, and unjustly too! He mustered up an indifferent air, closed his lips tight, and determined to give no further signs.

The defiance of his look made Mr.Gordon angry, and he inflicted in succession five hard cuts on either hand, each one of which, was more excruciating than the last.
"Now, go to your seat." Eric did go to his seat, with all his bad passions roused, and he walked in a jaunty and defiant kind of way that made the master really grieve at the disgrace into which he had fallen.