Morning school is now over and an hour is to pass before the midday dinner. You think perhaps these boys now are going to have complete rest, a chance of being by themselves, time for reading--not a bit of it. There will now be compulsory net practice or shooting on the range, recruit drill, a racquets or a fives tie to play off, an imposition, probably several, in arrears to be polished off, book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting or music classes to attend, or, worst of all, private tuition. Dinner comes as a temporary relief in which discussion runs rife on the latest scandal, scores at cricket, the news in the _Sportsman_, the newest catch-word, how So-and-So was ragged, the latest form of torture devised for the most prominent idiot, and all the customs, fashions and frivolities of their little world. After dinner a stampede is made to change from the appalling funereal garments of the morning which are given an all too brief respite, into the flannels necessary for the House match or nets of the afternoon. Some luckless ones who have perchance dropped a pen in the deadly stillness of a strict master's form or refused to do any preparation for over a week in a slack one's set, are hounded round the quadrangle for half an hour in an ignominious punishment drill, which drill sometimes contains over a hundred boys, which speaks well for the discipline of the school. Suppose it is a House-match day, and nearly every day in the summer term sees one of these in progress, those in the Houses concerned, not actually playing, will all be compelled to watch: nay, in fact so imbued with the evils of over-athleticism are they that they would all rather miss anything than one ball bowled, one run scored; their eyes are riveted on to the cricket pitch; the whole staff is there equally occupied; the life of the little nation is at stake; nothing at all matters except the winning or losing of this single match. It is the one big world event about which quarrels will be raised, criticism will be rife for days to come, in dormitory, in the Common Room, in the privacy of the masters' own sitting-rooms or in the studies of the boys. Other Houses not actually playing will be practising assiduously at nets until another bell rings to show that time is up; a rush is made to change back into the monastic garb preparatory to getting up more work (or pretending to) for afternoon school. The first period of the afternoon to-day is given up to what is called science for our forms; that is to say, a few nerveless experiments which never come off are tried by a man whom it is hard to differentiate from the bottle-washer of the laboratory, a man with an accent (not that that matters intrinsically), but a man with the vulgar attributes that accompany accent when promoted to spheres unused to such things; living in an air of snobbishness and hypocrisy, this "bounder" bounds more than ever he need and causes howls of derision as, in his nervousness