There were different kinds of
sounds. A long thin cane would have a high whistling sound and he
wondered what was that pain like. It made him shivery to think of it
and cold: and what Athy said too. But what was there to laugh at in it?
It made him shivery: but that was because you always felt like a shiver
when you let down your trousers. It was the same in the bath when you
undressed yourself. He wondered who had to let them down, the master or
the boy himself. O how could they laugh about it that way?
He looked at Athy's rolled-up sleeves and knuckly inky hands. He had
rolled up his sleeves to show how Mr Gleeson would roll up his sleeves.
But Mr Gleeson had round shiny cuffs and clean white wrists and fattish
white hands and the nails of them were long and pointed. Perhaps he
pared them too like Lady Boyle. But they were terribly long and pointed
nails. So long and cruel they were, though the white fattish hands were
not cruel but gentle. And though he trembled with cold and fright to
think of the cruel long nails and of the high whistling sound of the cane
and of the chill you felt at the end of your shirt when you undressed
yourself yet he felt a feeling of queer quiet pleasure inside him to think
of the white fattish hands, clean and strong and gentle.
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