see any fun in having his nose jammed an inch and a half deep into
liquid mud, with ten or a dozen fellows on top of him trying to jam it
in still deeper: and in the result he always wanted to hit some one when
he got up again. Besides, a game you were obliged to play whether you
wanted to or not, ceased to be a game at all--and during its season
football was compulsory on half-holidays, at any rate for the juniors.
Now, as a prefect, he was exempt, and he appreciated his exemption.
But, his distaste for the _two_ great games notwithstanding, there was
nothing of the loafer or the muff about Haviland. He was always in the
pink of hard training, clear-eyed, clean-skinned, thoroughly sound in
wind and limb.

In the matter of his school work we regret to say that our friend cut a
less creditable figure; for in it indeed he shone in no particular
branch. His sole object was to get through his work as quickly and as
easily as possible, thereby to have more time for his favourite pursuit,
wherefore his ambition soared no higher than a respectable middle of the
fifth form. The ethics of Saint Kirwin's held "cribs" to be perfectly
justifiable--needless to say not from the masters' point of view--and a
large proportion generously availed themselves of such dubious aid,
being of course careful to avoid all the stock catches. Even a certain
amount of cribbing in form was held not to be unlawful, although
perilous; and when the Reverend Joseph Wilmot--an absent and star-gazing
type of master--gravely and impressively warned his Greek Testament form
one Sunday, _a propos_ of some suspiciously technical construing, that
he should, detect in a moment if any one used the English version, the
form was simply dying to roar; the point of the joke being that every
fellow composing it had got his English version concealed beneath his
locker, and was surreptitiously reading up the part where he would be
put on, this having been the practice of the form from time immemorial,
and, we grieve to say, destined to continue so indefinitely.

"Serve 'em right," pronounced Haviland, who was one of the offenders.
"They've no business to make us work on Sundays. It's smashing up the
fourth commandment. So if we take the English in to form with us it
saves us from working, and we get out of smashing the fourth
commandment. See?"

They did see, for a shout of acclamation hailed this young casuist's
special pleading. "Besides," he added, "Old