o real reason
why, if the day is fine, he should not wear gym shoes, should he prefer
them. But, if he does, the thing creates a perfect sensation. Boys say,
"Great Scott, what _have_ you got on?" Masters say, "Jones, _what_ are
you wearing on your feet?" In the few minutes which elapse between the
assembling of the form for call-over and the arrival of the form master,
some wag is sure either to stamp on the gym shoes, accompanying the act
with some satirical remark, or else to pull one of them off, and
inaugurate an impromptu game of football with it. There was once a boy
who went to school one morning in elastic-sided boots.

Mike had always been coldly distant in his relations to the rest of his
form, looking on them, with a few exceptions, as worms; and the form,
since his innings against Downing's on the Friday, had regarded Mike
with respect. So that he escaped the ragging he would have had to
undergo at Wrykyn in similar circumstance. It was only Mr. Downing who
gave trouble.

There is a sort of instinct which enables some masters to tell when a
boy in their form is wearing gym shoes instead of the more formal kind,
just as people who dislike cats always know when one is in a room with
them. They cannot see it but they feel it in their bones.

Mr. Downing was perhaps the most bigoted anti-gym-shoeist in the whole
list of English schoolmasters. He waged war remorselessly against gym
shoes. Satire, abuse, lines, detention--every weapon was employed by him
in dealing with their wearers. It had been the late Dunster's practice
always to go over to school in gym shoes when, as he usually did, he
felt shaky in the morning's lesson. Mr. Downing always detected him in
the first five minutes, and that meant a lecture of anything from ten
minutes to a quarter of an hour on Untidy Habits and Boys Who Looked
Like Loafers--which broke the back of the morning's work nicely. On one
occasion, when a particularly tricky bit of Livy was on the bill of
fare, Dunster had entered the form room in heelless Turkish bath
slippers, of a vivid crimson; and the subsequent proceedings, including
his journey over to the house to change the heelless atrocities, had
seen him through very nearly to the quarter-to-eleven interval.

Mike, accordingly, had not been in his place for three minutes when Mr.
Downing, stiffening like a pointer, called his name.

"Yes, sir?" said Mike.

"_What_ are you wearing on your feet, Jackson?"

"Gym shoe