The original offence was not a very serious one as schoolboy offence go; the boy was merely reading a penny novelette surreptitiously when he ought to have been studying “The Old Curiousity Shop” with the rest of the class. But when taxed with it the boy denied it, or at least prevaricated over it, as schoolboys will, and endeavoured to conceal the corpus delicti. The assistant master took him to the headmaster, who said he ought to be caned. The boy, however, declined to submit to the punishment on the ground that he was not to be caned, and went home. In the sequel the headmaster declined to receive the boy back into the school unless he submitted to the punishment prescribed by the rules.

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