shout, too."

There was nothing to mar the extreme joyousness of life. The world lay
at Gordon's feet. He had only to stoop to pick it up.

CHAPTER V: DUAL PERSONALITY

The Two Cock was always played a fortnight after the Thirds, and during
that fortnight the outhouses had to play off among themselves three
preliminary rounds. For them it was a remarkably strenuous time. The two
best outhouses sides had, in fact, to play four house matches in twelve
days. But it was possible for the School House to take things easily for
at least half a week. And these three days out of training meant a lot
to Gordon and others, who would have to play not only in the Two Cock,
but most probably in the Three Cock as well. It prevented staleness;
and staleness was the great danger that all outhouse sides had to face.

The week after the Thirds was regarded as a fairly slack time
before the strenuous week that culminated in the Two Cock. There
would probably be only one game--on the Saturday; and that a short
quarter-of-an-hour-each-way affair. It was usually a quite uneventful
time. This term, however, an occurrence took place that had a big effect
on the growth of Gordon's character.

Finnemore had caught influenza; the Chief had to go for a week to
Oxford. The Sixth was at a loose end. Various masters took it in various
subjects, or at least were supposed to. Most of the week was spent in
the studies, as the master in charge forgot to turn up.

One afternoon, Ferrers was to take them in English. But Ferrers was
engaged in writing an article on the "New Public School Boy" for _The
Cornhill Magazine_, and wanted to be quiet. He sent the form to their
studies to write an essay on a typical Ferrers subject: "Poetry is in
the first instance the outpouring of a rebel." It had to be shown up by
six o'clock.

Gordon revelled in it. During the long afternoon he poured out his
fierce soul. His life was now a strange paradox. Half the time he
thought of poetry, worshipping any sort of rebellion against the
conventional standards of living. At other times he was like the
ordinary Philistine, blindly worshipping games, never seeing that they
led nowhere, and were as a blind alley. This afternoon Gordon forgot
everything but Swinburne, Byron, Rossetti, and the poets of revolt. He
stigmatised Wordsworth as a doddering old man, not knowing that his
return to nature was the greatest revolution in English literature. In a
text-book he saw