goaded into retaliation,
notwithstanding his fear of Avery's tongue.

"Well, what is your father?" he asked.

"My father's a duke, and I've got an uncle who's a millionaire, and my
governess is a queen," said Avery.

Michael was silent: he could not contend with Avery. Altogether the
Upper Fourth was a very unpleasant class; but next term Michael and half
of the class were moved up to the Lower Fifth, and Avery left to go to a
private school in Surrey, because he was ultimately destined for
Charterhouse, near which school his people had, as he said, taken a
large house. Curiously enough the combination of half the Upper Fourth
with the half of the Lower Fifth left behind made a rather pleasant
class, one that Michael enjoyed as much as any other so far,
particularly as he was beginning to find that he was clever enough to
avoid doing as much school-work as hitherto he had done, without in any
way permanently jeopardizing his position near the top of the form. To
be sure Mr. Wagstaff, the cherub-faced master of the Lower Fifth,
complained of his continually shifting position from one end of the
class to the other; but Michael justified himself and incidentally
somewhat annoyed Mr. Wagstaff by coming out head boy in the Christmas
examinations. Meanwhile, if he found Greek irregular verbs and Latin
gender rhymes tiresome, Michael read unceasingly at home, preferably
books that encouraged the private schoolboy's instinct to take sides.
Michael was for the Trojans against the Greeks, partly on account of the
Greek verbs, but principally because he once had a straw hat inscribed
H.M.S. Hector. He was also for the Lancastrians against the Yorkists,
and, of course, for the Jacobites against the Hanoverians. Somewhat
illogically, he was for the Americans against the English, because as
Miss Carthew pointed out he was English himself and the English were
beaten. She used to teaze Michael for nearly always choosing the beaten
side. She also used to annoy him by her assertion that in taking the
part of the Americans in the War of Independence, he showed that most of
his other choices were only due to the books he read. She used to make
him very angry by saying that he was at heart a Roundhead and a Whig,
and even hinted that he would grow up a Radical. This last insinuation
really annoyed him very much indeed, because at Randell House no boy
could be anything but a Conservative without laying himself open to the
suggestion that