master told
Michael and the other new boys to go to the book-room and get their
school caps, and at half-past twelve Michael waited outside on the
yellow gravel for Rodber, splendidly proud of himself in a blue cap
crested with a cockleshell worked in silver wire. He was longing to look
at himself in the glass at home and to show Miss Carthew and Stella and
Nanny and Cook and Gladys his school cap.

However, before he could go home Rodber took him round to where the
tuckshop ambush would ensue at four o'clock. He showed him a door in a
wall which led apparently into the narrow shady garden of an empty house
next to the school. He explained how Michael was to hang about outside
this door and when the Churchites demanded his presence, he told him
that he was to run as hard as he could down the garden towards the
house.

"We'll do the rest," said Rodber. "And now cut off home."

As soon as Michael was inside Number 64 he rushed upstairs to his
bedroom and examined himself critically in the looking-glass. Really the
new cap made a great difference. He seemed older somehow and more
important. He wished that his arms and legs were not so thin, and he
looked forward to the time when like Rodber he would wear Etons.
However, his hair was now pleasantly and inconspicuously straight: he
had already seen boys woefully teazed on account of their curls, and
Michael congratulated himself that generally his dress and appearance
conformed with the fashion of the younger boys' dress at Randell's. It
would be terrible to excite notice. In fact, Michael supposed that to
excite notice was the worst sin anybody could possibly commit. He hoped
he would never excite notice. He would like to remain perfectly
ordinary, and very slowly by an inconspicuous and gradual growth he
would thus arrive in time at the dignity and honour enjoyed by Rodber,
and perhaps even to the sacred majesty that clung to Pearson. Already he
was going to take an active part in the adventures of school; and he
felt sorry for the boys who without Rodber's influence would mildly go
straight home at four o'clock.

Indeed, Michael set out for afternoon school in a somewhat elated frame
of mind, and when he turned into the schoolyard, wearing the school cap,
he felt bold enough to watch a game of Conquerors that was proceeding
between two solemn-faced boys. He thought that to try to crack a
chestnut hanging on a piece of string with another chestnut similarly
suspended