As the children were slowly straggling to their places the next morning, the master waited for an opportunity to speak to Rupert.

That beautiful but scarcely amiable youth was, as usual, surrounded and impeded by a group of his small female admirers, for whom, it is but just to add, he had a supreme contempt.

Possibly it was this healthy quality that inclined the master towards him, and it was consequently with some satisfaction that he overheard fragments of his openly disparaging comments upon his worshippers.
"There!" to Clarinda Jones, "don't flop! And don't YOU," to Octavia Dean, "go on breathing over my head like that.

If there's anything I hate it's having a girl breathing round me.

Yes, you were! I felt it in my hair.