bedroom and was more satisfied, by some strange freak it
was bigger than my sitting-room, and after I had seen other freshers'
bedrooms I acknowledged my good luck. There was at least room to have
a bath without splashing the bed. I was still looking disconsolately
about me when my scout came in and treated me with a calm contempt
which immediately raised my spirits. His air was so obviously that of
the man who knew all about things, and he told me what to do with a
gravity which was intended to be most impressive. His name was
Clarkson and I stayed on his staircase during the three years I was in
college, though at the end of my first year I moved into larger rooms.
He was in a mild kind of way an endless source of amusement to me,
because every one knew that under his veil of imperturbability was
hidden, not very successfully, a flourishing crop of failings.
Whenever his chief failing overpowered him his gravity increased, until
he became one of the most indescribably comic people I have ever seen.

He told me that chapel was at eight o'clock on the following morning,
and asked me if I should be breakfasting in. I found out afterwards
that unless I wanted to go to chapel I could go to a roll-call in any
garments which looked respectable, and then go back to bed; but I did
not hear this from Clarkson. He was far too keen on getting men out of
bed and their rooms put straight to give such very unnecessary
information. However, he was useful at the beginning, and had he not
told me where to go for dinner I don't suppose I should have troubled
to ask him.

My first dinner in hall was not a pleasant experience. The senior men
came up a day after us, and most freshers, until they settle down, seem
to spend their time in waiting for somebody else to say something.
That dinner really made me feel most gloomy; things seemed to have been
turned upside down, and in the process I felt as if I had fallen with a
thud to the bottom. There were two or three freshers from Cliborough
to whom I had scarcely spoken during my last two years at school, and
these fellows all sat together and enjoyed themselves, while I counted
for nothing whatever.

I began to learn the lesson that being in the Cliborough XI. and XV.
was not a free passport to glory. The man opposite to me looked as if
he had never heard of W. G. Grace, and when I tried to speak to the
fellow on my right about the Australians, he thought that I was talking
abou