And yet there are families in the British Isles in which gentility has persisted for hundreds of years, and though you may think me old-fashioned and romantic, I am convinced that such gentlefolk often have a certain quality, a kind of inner pluck bred into them, which is not to be despised at all. This is why I tell you my recollections of Miles Ruding. My first sight of him--if a new boy may look at a monitor--was on my rather wretched second day at a Public School. The three other pups who occupied an attic with me had gone out, and I was ruefully considering whether I had a right to any wall-space on which to hang two small oleographs depicting very scarlet horsemen on very bay horses, jumping very brown hedges, which my mother had bought me, thinking they might be suitable to the manly taste for which Public Schools are celebrated. I had taken them out of my playbox, together with the photographs of my parents and eldest sister, and spread them all on the window-seat. I was gazing at the little show lugubriously when the door was opened by a boy in ‘tails.’ “Hallo!” he said. “You new?” “Yes,” I answered in a mouselike voice. “I’m Ruding. Head of the House. You get an allowance of two bob weekly when it’s not stopped. You’ll see the fagging lists on the board. You don’t get any fagging first fortnight. What’s your name?” “Bartlet.” “Oh, ah!” He examined a piece of paper in his hand. “You’re one of mine. How are you getting on?” “Pretty well.” “That’s all right.” He seemed about to withdraw, so I asked him hastily: “Please, am I allowed to hang these pictures?” “Rather--any pictures you like. Let’s look at them!” He came forward. When his eyes fell on the array, he said abruptly, “Oh, sorry!” and, taking up the oleos, he turned his back on the photographs. A new boy is something of a psychologist, out of sheer fright, and when he said “Sorry!” because his eyes had fallen on the effigies of my people, I felt somehow that he couldn’t be a beast. “You got these at Tomkins’,” he said. “I had the same my first term. Not bad. I should put ’em up here.” While he was holding them to the wall I took a ‘squint’ at him. He seemed to me of a fabulous height--about five feet ten, I suppose; thin and bolt upright. He had a stick-up collar--‘barmaids’ had not yet come in--but not a very high one, and his neck was rather long. His hair was peculiar, dark and crisp, with a reddish tinge; and his dark-grey eyes were small and deep in, his cheekbones rather high, his cheeks thin and touched with freckles. His nose, chin, and cheekbones all seemed a little large for his face as yet. If I may put it so, there was a sort of unfinished finish about him. But he looked straight, and had a nice smile. “Well, young Bartlet,” he said handing me back the pictures, “buck up, and you’ll be all right.”