Julius and the Watchmaker Read Online Free PDF

Higgins.
    â€˜What? What did you call me, ’iggins?’ said Crimper, as he pulled the knife back over his shoulder and aimed it at Julius’s eye.
    â€˜You heard me, currant bun. You’re a fat, stupid, brainless, useless…fat…,’ shouted Julius at the top of his voice. Permanent disfigurement and now blindness or even death awaited him, but he was not going to accept it without a word or two of protest.
    Crimper McCready locked his tiny black eyes onto Julius’s. Nothing would stop him now.
    Please God, let it be quick and painless.
    While Julius braced himself for the first blow, salvation arrived in the form of old Whacker O’Brynn. The schoolmaster’s cane sliced through the air with the familiar whistle that had been terrifying his unlucky pupils for the past sixty-five years.
    Crimper was the first to scream out in pain as the cane came down across the backs of his legs. Amid a flurry of cane and shirt cuffs, Grimshaw fell to the ground, flailing his arms above his head to fend off the blows. Next, Fosdyke received a whack across the back of his hands. Whack, whack, whack, the blows fell on all the tender places. Whacker’s face was bright—caning the boys always made him feel young and vital.
    â€˜Young pups, take that, and that, and that,’ he shouted in time with the licks of the cane, as he mar-shalled them towards the day yard.
    Julius fell in behind, out of the range of the cane. When Whacker O’Brynn got going, every boy in the vicinity got a lick, the innocent as well as the guilty. Out into the day yard, the boys hopped and skipped, screeching and yelping.
    â€˜Get you gone, young pups. Into yer classes with ya,’ rasped Whacker.
    Crimper and his cohorts ran for their classrooms, leaving Julius hiding on Whacker’s blind side. But the old schoolmaster spotted him and lifted the cane. It sliced through the crisp morning air and cut into his backside.
    â€˜What are ya doing, skulking there like a sewer rat? Tell me that, now, ya young pup. Into class with ya afore I skin ya alive.’
    A minute later Julius was sitting at his desk with his face screwed up, waiting for the fire burning his backside to subside. All around him, boys threw balls of paper dipped in ink at one another and shouted at the tops of their voices, until the schoolmaster, Mr Crowley, marched in and lashed the blackboard with his cane.
    â€˜Silence you curs,’ he said, with a voice like a rusty hatchet. ‘Multiplication tables.’
    Well, you survived the morning, but the afternoon is looking decidedly doubtful, Higgins. The boys around him took their seats and groaned in misery.

    By lunchtime Julius had formulated a plan for surviving into adulthood and for keeping his eyes and ears intact as well—he would throw in school for the time being and apprentice himself to Jack Springheel, Esquire.
    As soon as the school bell sounded, he sprinted across the day yard, through the gate and made for home.
    He burst into the bookshop and crashed through the customers until he reached the counter.
    â€˜Julius Caesar? What in heaven’s name are you doing home at this hour? You’ve been expelled. I knew it,’ said Mr Higgins as he tried to serve two customers at once.
    â€˜No, no. I’ve forgotten something,’ said Julius, sneaking a sheet of his grandfather’s personalised notepaper from the stack under the counter. ‘I’ll explain it in a minute,’ he continued, before disappearing into the back parlour.
    At the writing desk, Julius laid out the sheet of paper. Augustus Windermere Higgins, Book Seller, Ironmonger Lane, it read in fine copperplate along the top. Julius dipped a pen in the ink bottle and, after a moment’s thought, applied it to the page.
    Dear Mr Coyle
    It is with regret that I must inform you that my grandson, Julius Caesar Higgins, has been taken seriously ill. His physician recommends complete bed rest