VI
Reading edition
Two days later, turning the corner of the playground, he heard shrill crying. Looking farther, he perceived Baltimore twisting the arms of a miniature boy, the smallest boy in the school—Brown Minimus. He was also kicking him in tender places.
“Now will you give it me?” he was saying.
A second later Baltimore was, in his turn, having his arms twisted and his posterior kicked. As Jeremy kicked and twisted he felt a strange, a mysterious pleasure.
Baltimore tried to bite, then he said, “I’ll tell Thompson.”
“I don’t care if you do,” said Jeremy.
Yes, he felt a strange wild pleasure, but when that afternoon old Thompson genially said:
“Well, Cole, I think Baltimore’s found his feet now all right, hasn’t he?”
Jeremy said: “Yes, sir; he has.”
He felt miserable. He sat down and kicked the turf furiously with his toes. He had lost something, he knew not what; something very precious. . . .
Someone called him, and he went off to join in a rag. Anyway, “Tom Brown” was a rotten book.