The religious preliminaries over, consisting in a dry and apparently grudging recognition of a sovereignty that required the homage, and the reading of a chapter of the Bible in class, the SECULAR business was proceeded with; and Cosmo was sitting with his books before him, occupied with a hard passage in Caesar, when the master left his desk and came to him.
"You'll have to make up for lost time to-day, Cosmo," he said.
Now if anything was certain to make Cosmo angry, it was the appearance, however slight, or however merely implied, of disapproval of anything his father thought, or did, or sanctioned.
His face flushed, and he answered quickly, "The time wasn't lost, sir." This reply made the master in his turn angry, but he restrained himself.
"I'm glad of that! I may then expect to find you prepared with your lessons for to-day." "I learned my lessons for yesterday," Cosmo answered; "but my father says it's no play to learn lessons." "Your father's not master of this school." "He's maister o' me," returned the boy, relapsing into the mother-tongue, which, except it be spoken in good humour, always sounds rude.
The master took the youth's devotion to his father for insolence to himself.
"I shall say no more," he rejoined, still using the self-command which of all men an autocrat requires, "till I find how you do in your class.

That you are the best scholar in it, is no reason why you should be allowed to idle away hours in which you might have been laying up store for the time to come."-- It was a phrase much favoured by the master--in present application foolish.--"But perhaps your father does not mean to send you to college ?" "My father hasna said, an' I haena speirt," answered Cosmo, with his eyes on his book.
Still misinterpreting the boy, the conceit and ill-temper of the master now overcame him, and caused him to forget the proprieties altogether.
"Haud on that gait, laddie, an' ye'll be as great a fule as yer father himsel'," he said.
Cosmo rose from his seat, white as the wall behind him, looked in the master's eyes, caught up his Caesar, and dashed the book in his face.

Most boys would then have made for the door, but that was not Cosmo's idea of bearing witness.

The moment the book left his hand, he drew himself up, stood still as a statue, looked full at the master, and waited.

Not by a motion would he avoid any consequence of his act.
He had not long to wait.