t any ordinary Australian, and had no notion that I meant the
cricket team which had been over in the summer. He was quite nice
about it, I must admit, and when he found out what I was driving at,
said: "I am afraid I don't know much about cricket; I have been over in
Germany the last two or three months, trying to get hold of the
language. I want to read Schiller and those other people in the
original."

He did not suit me at all, and as I had not the courage to give myself
away by asking the names of the other people our conversation dropped.
I was, in fact, dead off colour, and the sight of those three
Cliborough fellows almost took away my appetite. Until that moment it
had never occurred to me that I had been in the habit of thinking a lot
of myself at Cliborough, and in self-defence I must add that I do not
see how a public school can prosper unless some of the fellows stick
together and try to make things go on properly. Any "side" I may have
had was certainly unconscious, but I haven't an idea whether that is
the worst or the best kind. I know that I should have felt like having
a fit if any one had told me that I was conceited, and apart from that
I don't know anything about it, except, as I have said, that I was
angry that these fellows did not seem to remember that I had been at
Cliborough. I told myself that they had lost their sense of
proportion, which was a phrase my father used about any one who argued
with him; and I also said vehemently that they were worms; but unless
you are quite sure of it, and can get some one to agree with you, there
is not much satisfaction to be got from calling people worms.

I went out of the hall and found a tall, dark fellow bowling pebbles
aimlessly about the quadrangle. I bowled a pebble, and hitting him on
the back, had to apologize. It is rather odd, now I come to think
about it, that the first words I ever said to Jack Ward were in the
nature of an apology. We strolled out of the quadrangle into the
lodge, and after he had looked at me he asked me to come up to his
rooms and have some coffee. I was not at all sure that I wanted to go,
but I went. He shouted to his scout at the top of a very powerful
voice, and I felt that he was much more at home than I was. I
determined, moreover, to shout at my scout upon the earliest possible
opportunity.

"I had a brother up here," he said as soon as we were sitting by the
fire, "and he gave me some tips. One of the