resented. To have Westby tell the boys the first day how he had called
the new master a new kid and the second day how he had ducked him was a
little too much; it seemed to Irving that Westby was slyly amusing
himself by undermining his authority. But the boy’s manner was
pleasantly ingratiating always; Irving felt baffled. Carroll did not
help him much towards an interpretation; Carroll sat by self-contained,
quietly intelligent, amused. Irving liked both the boys, and yet as the
days passed, he seemed to grow more and more uneasy and anxious in their
society.

In the classroom he was holding his own; he was a good mathematical
scholar, he prepared the lessons thoroughly, and he found it generally
easy to keep order by assigning problems to be worked out in class. The
weather continued good, so that during play time the fellows were out
of doors instead of loafing round in dormitory. They all had their own
little affairs to organize; athletic clubs and literary societies held
their first meetings; there was a process of general shaking down; and
in the interest and industry occasioned by all this, there was not much
opportunity or disposition to make trouble.

But the first Sunday was a bad day. In a boys’ school bad weather is apt
to be accompanied by bad behavior; on this Sunday it poured. The boys,
having put on their best clothes, were obliged, when they went out to
chapel, to wear rubbers and to carry umbrellas—an imposition against
which they rebelled. After chapel, there was an hour before dinner, and
in that hour most of the Sixth Formers sought their rooms—or sought one
another’s rooms; it seemed to Irving, who was trying to read and who had
a headache, that there was a needless amount of rushing up and down the
corridors and of slamming of doors. By and by the tumult became
uproarious, shouts of laughter and the sound of heavy bodies being