sal
"rags."

Rogers was imperially himself. The Corps was, of course, to be allowed
considerably more time this term. There were two parades a week, one a
company drill on Friday, the other a field day on Wednesday. Besides
this, between twelve-thirty and lunch there would be section and platoon
drill every day. Rogers imagined that O.T.C. work would shortly become
more important and more popular than football; he saw himself taking the
position once held by Buller. On the strength of this alluring prospect
he bought a new uniform.

For the first few days life was entertainingly disorganised. The
time-table worked out all wrong. Gregory got gazetted; and Akerman, on
becoming captain, forgot the numbers of the football grounds, thus
causing endless and hilarious confusion. No one quite knew what was
happening, but everyone was happily excited, and vaguely garrulous about
"how the war has changed things."

Gordon found that his new position brought with it certain other
honours. In the Corps, for instance, where for three years he had so
tempered slackness with insolence as to make him the worst private in
the company, he found himself a lance-corporal, in charge of a section.
He was elected to the Dolts Literary Society, under the placid autocracy
of Claremont, who called them his "stolidi." But nothing showed more
clearly the change wrought by the war than the fact that Gordon was
nominated to the Games Committee, before which august body hardly six
months ago he had cut such an inglorious figure. It was a strange irony.

In the School House every prefect was allowed four fags, so as Foster
and Gordon were both prefects, the games study had a goodly crowd of
menials. For the most part they were simple, insignificant,
Eton-collared mortals, who flitted round the room after breakfast with
dusters, and at various other times of the day came in to see after the
fire. Gordon took little notice of them. Foster had made out a list of
the days on which each fag was on duty; one, Hare, was put in charge,
and when anything went wrong, Hare was considered responsible and
beaten. After two such castigations the excellence of the fagging was
maintained at an unusually high standard.

The first fortnight of the term was feverish. Corps work was revivified
under the stimulus of war; the field days by Babylon Hill provided
genuine excitement, in spite of the prolixity of Rogers's subsequent
summary of the day's work. There were g