He didn’t even say ‘Sir’ at the end of the sentence…
I don’t know who was more stunned, McNulty, 11 Sixth Year Scholars in their ‘grown up’ casual clothes, or William himself. However, startling it may have been for ‘Sir’ there was one thing programmed into his genes and that was how to deal with insolent schoolboys. He reached into his desk drawer and withdrew a light-tan colored 2 tail Lochgelly, probably an ‘H’, certainly one of the thickest and stiffest straps I had seen in 12 years of schooling. It looked brand new, and may very well have been; it was so stiff you could have pointed it at someone without any noticeable bend.