difference."

There is usually one house in every school of the black sheep sort,
and, if you go to the root of the matter, you will generally find that
the fault is with the master of that house. A house-master who enters
into the life of his house, coaches them in games--if an athlete--or,
if not an athlete, watches the games, umpiring at cricket and
refereeing at football, never finds much difficulty in keeping order.
It may be accepted as fact that the juniors of a house will never be
orderly of their own free will, but disturbances in the junior day-room
do not make the house undisciplined. The prefects are the criterion.
If you find them joining in the general "rags", and even starting
private ones on their own account, then you may safely say that it is
time the master of that house retired from the business, and took to
chicken-farming. And that was the state of things in Dexter's. It was
the most lawless of the houses. Mr Dexter belonged to a type of master
almost unknown at a public school--the usher type. In a private school
he might have passed. At Wrykyn he was out of place. To him the whole
duty of a house-master appeared to be to wage war against his house.

When Dexter's won the final for the cricket cup in the summer term of
two years back, the match lasted four afternoons--four solid afternoons
of glorious, up-and-down cricket. Mr Dexter did not see a single ball of
that match bowled. He was prowling in sequestered lanes and broken-down
barns out of bounds on the off-chance that he might catch some member of
his house smoking there. As if the whole of the house, from the head to
the smallest fag, were not on the field watching Day's best bats collapse
before Henderson's bowling, and Moriarty hit up that marvellous and
unexpected fifty-three at the end of the second innings!