My mouth seemed to get a little dry, too, and the thought came upon me in the midst of my sensations that I wanted to get up and fight.
The circumstances were rather exceptional, for I was suffering from two sore places.

One started from my shoulder and went down my back, where there must have been the mark of the cane; the other was a mental sore, caused by the word _pauper_, which seemed to rankle and sting more than the cut from the cane.
Of course I ought to have treated it as beneath my notice, but whoever reads this will have found out before now that I was very far from perfect; and as those two lads evidently saw my annoyance, and went on trying to increase it, I bent over my work in a vicious way, and kept on taking out the dead leaves and stems as if they were some of the enemies Mr Solomon had been talking about in the pits.
All at once, as I was bending down, I heard Courtenay, the elder boy, say: "What did he say--back to school and be flogged ?" "Yes," said Philip aloud; "but he didn't know.

They only flog workhouse boys and paupers." "I say, though," said Courtenay, "who is that chap grubbing out the slugs and snails ?" My back was turned, and I went on with my work.

"What! that chap I spoke to ?" said Philip; "why, I told you.

He's a pauper." "Is he ?" "Yes, and Browny fetched him from the workhouse.