The boy's fat, unwholesome cheeks shook like those of an overfed man. His small eyes protruded with fear. Though bearing no visible sign of ill-usage, he looked the picture of abject terror.
"Get up, Mawdster--take your filthy paws off my breeks!" Harwood commanded, in disgust.
"But--but aren't you going to do anything for me, Harwood?"
"Yes--I'm going to cane some of the dirt off your hands if you aren't inside Holbeck's within half a minute," said Harwood, inexorably.
This was an order which few Juniors would have dared to disobey, but the trembling boy, after a nervous glance back at the Squirms (discreetly silent now), stretched out an imploring hand to the Captain.
"Oh, please, Forge, won't you protect me?" he whined. "Harwood never will. He doesn't care if they kill me!"
Here, indeed, was rank rebellion--open defiance of a prefect, and insult heaped upon it. For the second time, Peter Mawdster had committed the gross offence of appealing to the Captain of the School over the head of his own prefect.
Dick said nothing at all. With a nod to Harwood, he rose to go.
"Hop into my study at once, Mawdster," said Harwood furiously. "As you're determined to seek trouble, you shall have it--six on each hand."
This incident--trivial perhaps in itself--left an unpleasant impression on Dick's mind. That a cheeky youngster from another House should twice have tried to secure his protection was irritating enough, but Harwood's method of handling the shrubbery trouble did not strike him as possessing the wisdom of Solomon. Whatever Mawdster had done to deserve his unpopularity, in bullying him so badly the Squirms had earned punishment. Yet the Prefect of Holbeck's House, without inquiry, caned the victim and let the tormentors go free!
"Is that bias or just an error of judgment?" Dick asked of Roger, to whom he confided the details of the occasion.
"I'd better not voice an opinion, Dick! Where Luke Harwood is concerned, possibly I'm one-eyed, too!"
"But wouldn't you, in my place, have interfered?"
"Emphatically, no. If anybody in Holbeck's House has a grievance against its prefect, he can report it to Mr. Holbeck. There is a further Court of Appeal--to the Headmaster himself."
"Well put, Roger, K.C.! You have freed my mind. I want nothing more on it than is already there, I can assure you."