“Only I thought I’d tell you it’s call-over on the Upper in half-an-hour.” “I’m not going to call-over.” “_What?_” “Damn call-over.” Carpenter winced: he did not like swearing, and he did like Rutter well enough to wince when he swore. But the spirit of the oath promptly blotted the letter from his mind. Carpenter was a law-abiding boy who had been a few terms at a good preparatory school; he could scarcely believe his ears, much less a word of Rutter’s idle boast. Rutter certainly looked as though he meant it, with his closed lid of a mouth, and his sullen brooding eyes. But his mad intention was obviously not to be carried out. “My dear man,” said Carpenter, “it’s one of the first rules of the school. Have you read them? You’d get into a frightful row!” “The bigger the better.” “You might even get bunked,” continued Chips, who was acquiring the school terminology as fast as he could, “for cutting call-over on purpose.” “Let them bunk me! Do you think I care? I never wanted to come here. I’d as soon’ve gone to prison. It can’t be worse. At any rate they let you alone—they got to. But here ... _let_ them bunk me! It’s the very thing I want. I loathe this hole, and everything about it. I don’t care whether you say it’s one of the best schools going, or what you say!” “I say it’s _the_ best. I know _I_ wouldn’t swop it for any other—or let a little bullying put me against it. And I have been bullied, if you want to know!” “Perhaps you’re proud of that?” “I hate it, Rutter! I hate lots of things more than you think. You’re in that little dormitory. You’re well off. But I didn’t come here expecting to find it all skittles. And I wouldn’t be anywhere else if it was twenty times worse than it is!” Rutter looked at the ungainly boy with the round shoulders and the hanging head; for the moment he was improved out of knowledge, his flat chest swelling, his big head thrown back, a proud flush upon his face. There was a touch of consciousness in the pride, but it was none the less real for that, and Jan could only marvel at it. He could not understand this pride of school; but he could see it, and envy it in his heart, even while a fresh sneer formed upon his lips. He wished he was not such an opposite extreme to Carpenter: he could not know that the other’s attitude was possibly unique, that few at all events came to school with such ready-made enthusiasm for their school, if fewer still brought his own antagonism. But, after all, Carpenter did not understand, and never would. “You weren’t in the quad just now,” said Jan, grimly. Chips looked the picture of guilt. “I was. At the end. And I feel such a brute!” “You? Why?” Jan was frowning at him. “You weren’t one of them?” “Of course I wasn’t! But—I might have stood by you—and I didn’t do a thing!”