pretty soon. Chief is a splendid fellow. But I am talking
of the average man. Just look at our staff: a more fatuous set of fools
I never struck. All in a groove, all worshipping the same rotten tin
gods. I am always repeating myself, but I can't help it. Damn them all,
I say, they've mucked up my life pretty well; not one of them has tried
to help me. They sit round the common room fire and gas. Betteridge
swears Ferrers is a wonderful man; personally, I think he is an
unmitigated nuisance. But at any rate, he is the only man who ever
thinks for himself. Oh, what fools they all are."

For the rest of the evening Gordon and Tester cursed and swore at
everyone and everything, and on the whole felt better for having got it
off their chests. At any rate, next day Gordon was plotting a rag on an
enormous scale with Archie Fletcher; and in a House game assisted in the
severe routing of Rogers' house by seventy-eight points to nil. It takes
a good deal to upset a boy of fifteen for very long. And the long
evenings were a supreme happiness.

* * * * *

It must be owned that during hall Lovelace was rather unsociable. It was
not that he studied Greek or Latin; he had a healthy contempt for
scholastic triumphs; horse-racing was the real interest of his life.
"This is my work," he used to scoff, brandishing _The Sportsman_ in
Gordon's face. "I am not going to be a classic scholar, and I sha'n't
discover any new element, or such stuff as that. I am going on the turf.
This is my work."

For an hour every evening he laboured perseveringly at "his work" with
form books, _The Sportsman_, and huge account books. For every single
race he chose the runners, and laid imaginary bets; each night he made
out how much he had lost or made; and it must be confessed that if he
had really laid money on the horses, he would most certainly have done a
good term's work. By Christmas he was one hundred and seventeen pounds
up. This pursuit, of course, rather militated against his activities in
the class-room; but, as he said, "It was only Claremont, the old
Methuselah--and they had a damned good crib." Lovelace did his work from
seven to eight, and during this time Caruthers, who seemed to be in the
happy condition of never having any work to do at all, wandered round
the studies. And during his peregrinations many who had been to him
before merely units in a vast organisation detached themselves from the
rest, and