text:  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