ickers's boys had a mind to "go
for" Moss's boys, they espoused the cause of Bickers, and when Mr
Moss's boys went out to battle against those of Bickers's house, their
war-cry was "Moss."

Much legend had grown up round the feud; but if anyone had had patience
to examine it to the bottom he would probably have found the long and
short to be that Mr Bickers, being unhappily endowed with a fussy
disposition and a sour and vindictive temper, had incurred the
displeasure of the boys of his rival's house, and not being the man to
smooth away a bad impression, had aggravated it by resenting keenly what
he considered to be an unjust prejudice against himself.

This little digression may enable the reader, if he has had the patience
to wade through it, to form an idea of the state of parties in that
particular section of Grandcourt which chiefly came under Railsford's
observation. With Roe's and Grover's houses on the other side of the
big square, his boys had comparatively little to do as a house, while
with the remote communities in the little square they had still less in
common.

But to return to our story. The first week of the next term was one of
the busiest Mark Railsford ever spent. His duties in the Shell began on
the second day, and the opening performance was not calculated to elate
his spirit. The sixty or seventy prodigies of learning who assembled
there came from all houses. A few were bent seriously on work and
promotion, the majority were equally in different about the one and the
other, and the remainder were professional idlers--most successful in
their profession.

Such were the hopeful materials which Railsford was expected to inspire
with a noble zeal in the pursuit of classics, history, and divinity. It
would have bets as easy--at least, so it seemed to the master--to
instruct he monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. The few workers
(scarcely one of whom, by the way, was in his own house) formed a little
_coterie_ apart, and grabbed up whatever morsels of wisdom and learning
their master could afford to let drop in the midst of his hand-to-hand
combat with the forces of anarchy and lethargy. But he had little to
say to them. His appeals were addressed to the body of gaping, half-
amused, half-bored loungers in the middle of the room, who listened
pleasantly and forgot instantaneously; who never knew where to go on,
and had an inveterate knack of misunderstanding the instructions for
next