ted so
much time. At tea that evening there was mirth at the V. B table.

On this occasion trouble was avoided. But one day Willing, a new boy,
lost his corps hat. He was certain it had been there before lunch. The
Corps Parade was already falling in. Seeing no other hat to fit him, he
very idiotically went on without a hat at all. It would have been far
better to have cut parade altogether. Clarke asked him where his hat
was, but his ideas on the subject were very nebulous. The whole corps
was kept waiting while School House hats were examined. Ten people had
got hats other than their own.

They each got a Georgic....

The pent-up fury of the House now broke loose. Everyone swore he would
murder Clarke on the last day, bag his clothes, and hold him in a cold
bath for half-an-hour. If half of the things that were going to be done
on the last day ever happened, how very few heads of houses would live
to tell the tale! It is so easy to talk, so very hard to do anything; a
head of the House is absolutely supreme. If he is at all sensitive, it
is possible to make his life utterly wretched by a silent demonstration
of hatred, but if he is at all a man, threats can never mature, and
Clarke was a man. During his last days at Fernhurst he was supremely
miserable. The House was split up into factions: he himself had no one
to talk to except Ferguson and Sandham. But he carried on the grim joke
to its completion. In the last week he beat four boys for being low in
form, and gave a whole dormitory a hundred lines daily till the end of
the term for talking after lights out. The Chief was sorry to lose him;
Ferguson would make a very weak head. The future was not too bright.

* * * * *

"I say, you know, I think I had better get a 'budge' this term." Gordon
announced this fact as the Lower Fifth were pretending to prepare for
the exam. Mansell protested:

"Now don't be a damned ass, my good man; you don't know when you are
well off. You stop with old Methuselah a bit longer. He is a most
damnable ass, but his form is a glorious slack."

"Oh, well, I don't know. I think the Sixth is slacker still. I am going
to specialise in something when I get there. I am not quite sure what.
But it's going to mean a lot of study hours."

At Fernhurst there was a great scheme by which specialists always worked
in their studies. To specialise was the dream of every School House boy.
It is so charming to watch,