“I say, Mullins,” he remarked to the last speaker, “if you don’t know, you’d better find out. I’ll ask you about it when we go up to dormitory.” “Right oh,” said Mullins, strong in the consciousness of numbers to back him; “but lots of chaps will tell you.” “Then I’ll ask them all,” said David. “Two at a time, if they funk.” His heart quaked, but the essence of courage is not that your heart should not quake, but that nobody else should know that it does. “Jesse had younger sons as well,” said somebody else, while Mullins was thinking about this. “There was one who was ruddy. I should think it was beastly to be ruddy.” “Oh, yes. He was an awful corker, and kept sheep. Don’t suppose he could keep wickets or anything like that. Probably he couldn’t hold the simplest catch, either. But I expect he could spoon them up himself, all right. Old Jesse would like that. He would probably say ‘Well played.’” “I say, _what_ was the name of the kid?” asked a voice in tones of the intensest interest. David had been rummaging in his desk in a meaningless manner, not in order to find anything, but to have something to do to cover his self-consciousness. But when this direct question was asked his hand closed firmly on a tight, solid classical dictionary, and he waited for the answer. “I think he was called David,” said Mullins, who had plucked up again after David’s threat, which had silenced him for the time. “Yes, David, I think,” he repeated. “Oh, do you?” said David, and before Mullins had time to guard, the classical dictionary, discharged with low trajectory, hit him violently on the nose, which proceeded to bleed. “And if anybody else wants to talk about David, that’s what he’ll get. Chuck it up here, Bags.” Bags gave a shriek of exultation, as he returned the dictionary. “Jolly good shot,” he said. “Bang on the proboscis.” Though David had followed that excellent maxim of war, “If in an inferior position, attack,” he probably would have thought twice, had he not completely lost his temper before attacking, for almost everybody but Bags seemed to have coalesced against him, and he was taking on rather a large order. But the very suddenness and savageness of the attack certainly surprised the hosts of the enemy for a moment, and the gore-streaked Mullins retired to comfort his nose amid dead silence. But David’s cause was an unpopular one, and he knew it. The Eagles match was won, except for him, and no one was level-headed enough to reflect that it would have been much more decisively lost without him. Under the circumstances, though he had silenced Mullins altogether (for Mullins certainly would not want to be hurt again, and David in his present mood did not care two straws whether he himself was hurt or not), he knew that he must expect a disagreeable evening.