“Oh, that’s not here. These are all college houses, in-boarders, and rather scuggy compared to out-boarders. Then there’s fifth form class-room and sixth form class-room, and school library up on top. I dare say Maddox is there now. Big school behind, more class-rooms and then the fives-court. Like to walk through?” No devout Catholic ever went to Rome in more heart-felt pilgrimage than was this to David. It was the temple of his religion that he saw, the public school which was to be his home. His horizon and aspirations stretched no farther than this red-brick arena, for, to the eyes of the thirteen-year-old, those who have finished with their public school and have gone out from it to the middle-aged Universities, are already past their prime. They are old; they are done with, unless the fact that they play cricket for Oxford or Cambridge gives them a little longer lease of immortality. But to be a great man, a Maddox or a Cruikshank in this theatre of life which already his feet trod, was the utmost dream of David’s ambitions, and if at the hoary age of eighteen he could only have played a real part in the life of the scenes that were now unrolling to him he felt that an honoured grave would be the natural conclusion. Everything that might happen after public school was over seemed a posthumous sort of affair. You were old after that, and at this moment even the Head, for all his terror and glamour, appeared a tomb-like creature. Hughes exchanged “Hullo” with a friend or two, and said “Right: half-past four” to one of them, which made David long to know what heroic thing was to happen then, and took him past the east end of chapel without further comment. David, quickly and quite mistakenly, drew a conclusion based on his private school experience. “I suppose chapel’s pretty good rot,” he said. This was worse than buttonholes. “Chapel rot?” said Hughes. “Why, it’s perfectly ripping. Maddox’s uncle was the architect. It’s the finest school-chapel in England, bar Eton perhaps. You’ll see it to-night. You never saw anything so ripping.” “Oh, sorry,” said David, flushing; “but I didn’t know.” Hughes paused a moment and looked at him again.