unds made it
impossible to keep up those delightful walks home with boys who went in
the same direction as oneself. There was no longer that hurried appeal
to 'wait for me at five o'clock' as one passed a friend in the
helter-skelter of reaching the class-room, when the five minutes' bell
had stopped and the clock was already chiming three. It was not
etiquette among the boarders of the four Houses to walk home with
day-boys except in a large and amorphous company of both. It was
impossible to go to tea with day-boys on Saturday afternoons without
special leave both from the Housemaster and from the captain of the
House. A boarder was tied down mercilessly to athletics, particularly to
rowing, which was the pride of the Houses and was exalted by them above
every other branch of sport. Michael, as a promising light-weight, had
to swim, every Saturday, until he could pass the swimming test at the
Paddington Baths, when he became a member of the rowing club, in order
to cox the House four. It did not add to his satisfaction with life,
when by his alleged bad steering Wheeler's House was beaten by Marlowe's
House coxed by the objectionable Buckley, now on the Modern Side and, as
a result of his capable handling of the ropes likely to be cox of the
School Eight in the race against Dulford from Putney Bridge to
Hammersmith. The Christmas holidays were a dismal business in Mr.
Wheeler's empty barracks. To be sure, Mrs. Wheeler made herself as
plumply agreeable as she could; but the boredom of it all was
exasperating and was only sustained by reading every volume that Henty
had ever written. Four weeks never dragged so endlessly, even in the
glooms of Carlington Road under Nurse's rule. The Lent term with its
persistent rowing practice on the muddy Thames was almost as bad as the
holidays. Michael hated the barges that bore down upon him and the
watermen who pulled across the bows of his boat. He hated the mudlarks
by the river-side who jeered as he followed the crew into the School
boathouse, and he loathed the walk home with the older boys who talked
incessantly of their own affairs. Nor did the culminating disaster of
the defeat by Marlowe's House mitigate his lot. When the Lent term was
over, to his great disappointment, some domestic trouble made it
impossible for Michael to spend the Easter holidays with Alan, so that
instead of three weeks to weld again that friendship in April
wanderings, in finding an early white-throat