id; but I wouldn't have done it, unless I'd
known that every boy was safe in Chapel. I couldn't have faced the
chaff. And--you could."

They were punished for cutting Chapel, because Caesar refused to give the
reason which would have saved them.

"I'd have told the truth," he admitted to John, "if I could have
shouldered that kid with the Manorites looking on."

John agreed that this was an excellent and a Caesarean (he coined the
adjective on this occasion) reason.

* * * * *

Among the Fifth Form boys of the Manor was a big, coarse-looking youth
of the name of Beaumont-Greene. Everybody called him Beaumont-Greene in
full, because upon his first appearance at Bill he had stopped the line
of boys by refusing to answer to the name of Greene.

"My name," said he, in a shrill pipe, "is Beaumont-Greene, and we spell
the Greene with a final 'e'."

Beaumont-Greene was a type of boy, unhappily, too common at all Public
Schools. He had no feeling whatever for Harrow, save that it was a place
where it behoved a boy to escape punishment if he could, and to run, hot
foot, towards anything which would yield pleasure to his body. He was
known to the Manorites as a funk at footer, and a prodigious consumer of
"food" at the Creameries. His father, having accumulated a large fortune
in manufacturing what was advertised in most of the public prints as the
"Imperishable, Seamless, Whale-skin Boot," gave his son plenty of money.
As a Lower Boy, Beaumont-Greene had but a sorry time of it. Somebody
discovered that he was what Gilbert once described as an "imperfect
ablutioner." The Caterpillar made a point of telling new boys the nature
of the punishment meted out to the unclean. He had assisted at the
"toshing" of Beaumont-Greene.

"A nasty job," the Caterpillar would remark, looking at his own
speckless finger-nails: "but it had to be done. We took the Greene
person" (the Caterpillar alone refused to defame the fine name of
Beaumont by linking it to Greene) "and placed him naked in a large
tosh. Into that tosh the house was invited to pour any fluid that could
be spared. One forgets things; but, unless I'm mistaken, the particular
sheep-wash used was made up of lemonade, syrups, ink--plenty of
that--milk (I bought a quart myself), tooth-powder, paraffin, and a cake
of Sapolio--Monkey Brand! We scrubbed the Yahoo thoroughly, washed its
teeth, ears, hair, and then we dried it. I don't know who smeared