ids are to be stopped wearing round tops like their betters, so you'd
best cut yours square. Brown was too 'cute to try for an exhibition.
It's bad enough for him to be a day boy, but it would be a jolly sight
worse to be an exhibitioner as well. When you come up, mind you're not
to collar me. It's bad form for a kid to collar a senior. Wait till I
speak to you, or else get some chap to bring you and introduce you.
Fellows who shirk form get jolly well lammed; so you'd better go easy at
first. Bring plenty of pocket-money, and some thick boots for kicking
chaps back.--Yours truly, H.T. Tempest."

This letter both gratified and perturbed me. It was pleasing to be
hailed as one of the inner circle of a fellow like Tempest; but it made
me suspect that I should not be taken into the fold at my own valuation,
but that of my betters, which in a public school is a very different
thing. The little details, too, about dress and manners rather startled
me. For supposing I had gone up not knowing these things, what mistakes
I should have made! Suppose, for instance, I had gone up in a billycock
with a round instead of a square top; or suppose I had hailed Tempest
without his first speaking to me, what would have become of me? I
trembled to think of it, and was glad to feel I had a friend at court
who would see I didn't "shirk form."

What made me still more uneasy was the reference to my connection with a
girl's school. The prize list had made it appear, to any one who did
not know better, that I was a pupil from Miss Steele's, High School,
Fallowfield. Suppose this list should get into the hands of any of the
fellows, or that some other new boy should carelessly leave his copy
about! I wished I had had more sense than to mention the High School at
all. This came of my chivalrous desire, said I to myself, to give Miss
Steele and her principal the benefit of my distinction. Now I might
have to thank them for endless trouble. I did my best to hope the worst
would not happen.

"Fellows never read prize lists of exams, they've not been in for,"
thought I; "and when they have been in, they never trouble themselves
about any one's name but their own. Why, I haven't even noticed where a
single other chap comes from. They may all be girls' schools, for all I
know. It's not likely any one has noticed mine."

And to avoid all accident I dropped mine into the fire, and had to stand
my mother's reproaches for destroying