Next morning was Sunday, and, in lieu of early school, the boys were allowed to spend the hour before breakfast at the bathing-place. But when David asked Stone to come and bathe with him Stone replied that he was engaged to Mullins, and it was bitter to see Ferrers lend Mullins his towel (though after he had finished with it himself) and find that Mullins, fat, stupid Mullins, was regarded not only as an injured person, which anybody could see who looked at his face, but an unjustly injured person. And in the middle of David’s bathe, who should appear but the Archdeacon himself! It is true that he went to the far end of the bathing-place, which was known as the masters’ bathing-place, where the Head himself sometimes swam fiercely about; but the stout apparition of his father, clad in a striped jersey, cut off at the knees and shoulders, standing on the header-board was a distracting affair. Even the loyal Bags, who had followed David down to keep him company (for Bags was not allowed to bathe, having a weak heart), even Bags gazed in dismay at that squat, square form, and said “Lor’.” Simultaneously somebody behind David remarked: “Anyhow, he takes his gaiters off.” David felt too desolate to resent this; also he was watching his father, almost praying that he should take a neat header. But a loud, flat smack was heard as he fell into the water. And Ferrers said to Mullins: “I say, can your pater take belly-floppers?” Then Mullins (with a watchful eye on David) as he dried himself with Ferrers’s towel, began to whistle “Once in royal David’s city.” Other boys began to whistle it too. It was all deplorable. The day had begun badly and continued badly. David offered to share his hymn-book with the boy who sat next him in chapel, who appeared not to see what he did. He asked Stone to come for a walk with him after chapel, and again Stone was engaged to Mullins. But all the time Bags was waiting like a dog to divert and console his master if only his master would allow him, eagerly braving the unpleasantness of alliance with the unpopular side, and though, twenty-four hours ago, David would have scouted the idea of Bags consoling him, he turned to him eagerly now, and even allowed him to have the Monarch’s travelling-carriage in his pocket at dinner. And though all the slights and sneers which surrounded them were of the general nature of chaff, they were of the species of chaff which is meant to hurt. As Bags had once acutely remarked, you can hit a fellow over the head just to show you like him, but you can do the very same thing in an opposite spirit, and it was this spirit just now that animated these small boys. It was “a rag,” no doubt, but a rag with a sting in it, for David was paying the penalty of having been popular, as well as of having disappointed his admirers.