tters on an
amicable footing; and that he would take an opportunity, the next time
he had an assembly at his house, of consulting his friends on the
subject. And had Jack stuck to this resolution, there is little doubt
that, by some device or other, he would have gained all he wanted; for
the Squire, being an easy, good-natured man, and wishing really to do
his duty in the matter of the ushership, would probably, if Jack had
yielded in this instance with a good grace, have probably allowed him in
the end to have things very much his own way. But to the surprise of
everybody, the next time Jack had a party of friends with him, he rose
up, and putting on that peculiarly sanctimonious expression which his
countenance generally assumed when he had a mind to confuse and mystify
his auditors by a string of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations, made a
long, unintelligible, and inconsistent harangue, the drift of which no
one could well understand, except that it bore that "both the Justices
and the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses who could not
understand a word of Jack's contract, and knew nothing of black-letter
whatever; but that, nevertheless, as they had decided against him, he,
as a loyal subject, must and would submit;--not, however, that he had
the least idea of taking the Squire's usher, or any other usher
whatsoever, on trials, contrary to the schoolboys' wishes; _that_, he
begged to say, he would never hear of:--still he would obey the law by
laying no claim himself to the usher's salary, nor interfering with the
usher's drawing it; and yet that he could not exactly answer for others
not doing so;"--Jack knowing all the time, that, claim as he might, he
himself had no more right to the salary than to the throne of the
Celestial Empire; while, on the other hand, by locking up the
schoolroom, and keeping the key in his pocket, he had rendered it
impossible for the poor wight of an usher to recover one penny of
it--the legal condition of his doing so being his actual possession of
the schoolhouse itself, of which Jack, by this last manoeuvre, had
contrived to deprive him. But, as if to finish the matter, and to prove
the knavish spirit in which this protestation was made, he instantly got
a _private_ friend and relative of his own, with whom the whole scheme
had been arranged beforehand, to come forward and bring an action on the
case, in which the latter claimed the whole fund which would have
belonged to the