carded for an ill-fitting suit that imitated the dull garb of a
man. No longer were Michael and Alan grubby and inky: no longer did they
fill their pockets with an agglomeration of messes: no longer did their
hair sprout in bistre sparseness, for now Michael and Alan were vain of
the golden lights and chestnut shadows, not because girls mattered, but
because like Narcissus they perceived themselves in the mirror of
popular admiration. Now they affected very light trousers and very broad
collars and shoes and unwrinkling socks and cuffs that gleamed very
white. They looked back with detestation upon the excesses of costume
induced by the quadruple intrigue, and they congratulated themselves
that no one of importance had beheld their lapse.

Michael and Alan were lords of Little Side football and in their
treatment of the underlings stretched the prerogatives of greatness to
the limit. They swaggered on to the field of play, where in combination
on the left wing they brought off feats of astonishing swiftness and
agility. Michael used to watch Alan seeming very fair in his black vest
and poised eagerly for the ball to swing out from the half-back. Alan
would take the spinning pass and bound forward into the stink-stained
Modern juniors or embryo subalterns of Army C. The clumsiest of them
would receive Alan's delicate hand full in his face and, as with
revengeful mutterings the enemy bore down upon him, Alan would pass the
ball to Michael, who with all his speed would gallop along the
touch-line and score a try in the corner. Members of Big Side marked
Michael and Alan as the two most promising three-quarters for Middle
Side next year, and when the bell sounded at twenty minutes to three,
the members of Big Side would walk with Michael and Alan towards the
changing room and encourage them by flattery and genial ragging. In the
lavatory, Michael and Alan would souse with water all the kids in reach,
and the kids would be duly grateful for so much acknowledgment of their
existence from these stripling gods. In the changing room they would
pleasantly fling the disordered clothes of trespassers near their sacred
places on to the floor or kick the caps of Second-Form boys to the dusty
tops of lockers, and then just as the clock was hard on three, they
would saunter up the School steps and along the corridor to their
class-room, where they would yawn their way through Cicero's prosy
defence of Milo or his fourth denunciation of