It chanced to be a mathematical morning, and Jan felt thankful as he went his way after prayers; for he was not in Haigh's mathematical, but in the Spook's; and the Spook was a peculiarly innocuous master, who had a class-room in his quarters in the town, but not a house.
"The Thirteenth Proposition of the First Book of Euclid," sighed the Spook, exactly as though he were giving out a text in Chapel. "Many of you seem to have found so much difficulty over this that I propose to run over it again, if you will kindly hold your tongues. Hold your tongue, Kingdon! Another word from _you_, Pedley, and you'll have whipping in front of you--or rather behind you!"
The little joke was a stock felicity of the Spook's, and it was received in the usual fashion. At first there was a little titter, but nothing more until the Spook himself was seen to wear a sickly smile; thereupon the titter grew into a roar, and the roar rose into a bellow, and the bellow into one prolonged and insolent guffaw which the cadaverous but smiling Spook seemed to enjoy as much as the smallest boy in his mathematical. Jan alone did not join in the derisive chorus; to him it sounded almost as though it were in another room; and the figure of the Spook, standing before his blackboard, holding up a piece of chalk for silence, had become a strangely nebulous and wavering figure.
"'The angles that one straight line makes with another straight line,'" began the Spook at last, in a voice that Jan could hardly hear, "'are together equal ... together equal ... together equal ...'"
Jan wondered how many more times he was to hear those two words; his head swam with them; the Spook had paused, and was staring at him with fixed eyes and open mouth; and yet the words went on ringing in the swimming head, fainter and fainter, and further and further away, as Jan fell headlong into the unfathomable pit of insensibility.
He came to earth and life on a dilapidated couch in the Spook's study, where the Spook himself was in the act of laying him down, and of muttering in sepulchral tones, "A little faint, I fear!"
Jan had never fainted before, and in his heart he was rather proud of the achievement; but he was thankful that he had chosen the one first school of the week that was given over to mathematics. He would have been very sorry to have come to himself in the arms of Haigh. The Spook was a man who had obviously mistaken his vocation; but it was least obvious when mere kindness and goodness were required of him. Jan was detained in his study half the morning, and regaled with tea and toast and things to read. Heriot also looked in before second school, but was rather brusque and unsympathetic (after the Spook) until Jan ventured to say he hoped he would be allowed to play football that afternoon, as he had never felt better in his life. Heriot said that was a question for the doctor, who would be in to see Jan during the forenoon.