r do--haven't you got a hat?--we never wear caps here. Only
the louts wear caps. Bless you, if you were to go into the quadrangle
with that thing on, I----don't know what'd happen." The very idea was
quite beyond young Master East, and he looked unutterable things.

Tom thought his cap a very knowing affair, but confessed that he had a
hat in his hat-box; which was accordingly at once extracted from the
hind boot, and Tom equipped in his go-to-meeting roof, as his new friend
called it. But this didn't quite suit his fastidious taste in another
minute, being too shiny; so, as they walk up the town, they dive into
Nixon's the hatter's, and Tom is arrayed, to his utter astonishment, and
without paying for it, in a regulation cat-skin at seven-and-sixpence;
Nixon undertaking to send the best hat up to the matron's room,
School-house, in half an hour.

"You can send in a note for a tile on Monday, and make it all right, you
know," said Mentor; "we're allowed two seven-and-sixers a half, besides
what we bring from home."

Tom by this time began to be conscious of his new social position and
dignities, and to luxuriate in the realized ambition of being a
public-school boy at last, with a vested right of spoiling two
seven-and-sixers in half a year.

"You see," said his friend, as they strolled up towards the school
gates, in explanation of his conduct--"a great deal depends on how a
fellow cuts up at first. If he's got nothing odd about him, and answers
straightforward and holds his head up, he gets on. Now you'll do very
well as to rig, all but that cap. You see I'm doing the handsome thing
by you, because my father knows yours; besides, I want to please the old
lady. She gave me a half-a-sov. this half, and perhaps'll double it
next, if I keep in her good books."

There's nothing for candour like a lower-school boy; and East was a
genuine specimen--frank, hearty, and good-natured, well satisfied with
himself and his position, and chock full of life and spirits, and all
the Rugby prejudices and traditions which he had been able to get
together, in the long course of one half year, during which he had been
at the School-house.

And Tom, notwithstanding his bumptiousness, felt friends with him at
once, and began sucking in all his ways and prejudices, as fast as he
could understand them.

East was great in the character of cicerone; he carried Tom through the
great gates, where were only two or three boys. These satisfi