David was packed off early to bed that night in order that his brain might be in its most efficient mood for his examination next day, in a whirl of happy excitement. Never in all his day-dreams had he conceived that Adams’s could be like this. It was not like a school, it was like some new and entrancing kind of home, with the jolliest man he had ever seen as a master and father, and for family these friendly boys, and the black-haired girl, Adams’s daughter, whom everybody called by her Christian name. And yet the glamour of public school lay over it, and among this happy family there moved, like ordinary mortals, the great ones of the earth, Maddox and Cruikshank, and Westcott, captain of the school fifteen, behaving like everybody else and seemingly unconscious of their divinity. And these heroes had been seen with his mortal eyes, and he had been taken by Hughes into Maddox’s study after tea, where he had been permitted to help in washing up his tea-things. That to him was the Vatican, a room some twelve feet by ten in material dimensions, but a shrine, a centre. There were books everywhere—not school-books merely, but novels, books of poetry, books in French which Maddox read for his own amusement. Cricket-bats and a press of rackets were piled in the corner, and such space on the walls as was not filled with books was a mosaic of school photographs. And, perhaps most astounding of all, though Maddox had his school cricket colours, his racket and five colours, there was no trace of those glories anywhere; instead, on a nail behind the door, was hung a straw hat with just the house-colours on it, which David himself would be allowed to wear next September. Somehow that was tremendously grand: it was like a king who had the right to cover himself with stars and garters, preferring to go out to dinner in ordinary evening dress. . . . David’s bedroom was in the private part of the house, but next door was one of the boys’ dormitories. Merry, muffled noises leaked through the walls, and from the open window of the dormitory there came into his room whistlings and cheerful riot, and from time to time the clump of boots kicked off on to the floor. By degrees these sounds grew quiet, but he still lay in wide-eyed contemplation and expectancy. The most trifling preoccupation was always sufficient to make him forget to say his prayers, and to-night he had got into bed without their ever occurring to him. But, as he lay awake, among the million surmises that came to him about life in this enchanted place, he wondered whether fellows in the house said their prayers, since chapel apparently was a thing to be proud of, and on the moment he tumbled out of bed and knelt down. But only one petition seemed possible, and he made it. “O Lord, let me get a scholarship and come to Adams’s,” he said very fervently. He thought for a moment, but really there seemed to be nothing else that his heart desired.