There was a
brooding sense of storm in the atmosphere. Suddenly, as if in some
invisible fashion a set limit had been reached and passed, Richard Green
lifted his head from his work. His keen eyes sent a flashing glance down
the long, bare room.
"Robin!" he said.
Robin gave a violent start, and then a shuffling, reluctant movement as
if prodded into action against his will.
"Get up and come here!" his brother said.
Robin, in the act of blundering to his feet, checked abruptly, as if
arrested by something in the peremptory tone. "What for?" he asked, in a
surly note.
"Get up," Green repeated, with grim insistence, "and come here!"
Robin grabbed at the end of the row of desks nearest to him and dragged
himself slowly up. But there he hung irresolute. His heavy brows were
drawn, but the eyes beneath had a frightened, hunted look. They glared at
Green with a defiance so precarious that it was pathetic.
Green waited inexorably, magisterially, at his table. The sunlight had
gone and the room was darkening. Very slowly Robin moved forward,
dragging his feet along the bare boards. At the other end of the row of
desks he halted. His eyes travelled swiftly between his brother's stern
countenance and the wand of office that lay before him on the
writing-table.
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