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
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 circumstances. 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 shoes instead of boots, 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-shoeist in the whole
list of English schoolmasters. He waged war remorselessly against
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 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 heel-less
Turkish bath-slippers, of a vivid crimson; and the subsequent
proceedings, including his journey over to the house to change the
heel-less 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?"

"Pumps, sir."

"You are wearing pumps? Are you not aware that PUMPS are not the
proper things to come to school in? Why are you wearing _PUMPS_?"