He was not ducked in some shy water. On the other hand it did not approach his concept of an awesome initiation that a group of quite grubby boys seized him and bore him, frightened but not wholly unwilling, towards an underground lavatory where pallid basins gleamed in the interrupted light. His head was thrust into one of these prosaic basins and water sent unpleasantly down his neck. He was with some solemnity declared then to be fully a member of Transition A, and allowed to proceed to his lunch in the main section of this underground world, where he sat on the water pipes that lined the walls, eating bread and cheese timidly. The air tingled with the bloodthirsty shouts of footballers, violently kicking balls of crushed paper and twine. A lady with tawny hair in a corner of the basement dispensed Jersey caramels to appeased footballers. Indubitably the triumph of the day was the purchase of a cap, green, with blue circular stripes, crested with an eagle invincibly--a cap which proclaimed to the whole abashed world that here was one who was of the world's elect, here was one who was no lesser a mortal than a scholar at Doomington School. As he walked home that afternoon, he took slow and measured steps, so that none should be denied the privilege of gazing upon his cap. It seemed that less a thing of cloth texture sat on his head than a crest of fire. As he walked along Doomington Road, he paused before each mirrored window as if to tie a shoelace, and actually to compare his eagle, to their enormous disfavour, with all fowls in the lists of fable or biology. But a climax, which seemed on the whole rather to be overdoing it, occurred as he passed below the windows of the factory where his sister Channah was a button-hole hand. For the shrill bravas of feminine throats attracted his gaze upwards and there he saw and heard the clustered buttonhole hands cheering and waving enthusiastically. And before Philip had time to lower his blushing face a cloud of confetti descended upon this youthful bridegroom of our fair Lady of Wisdom, accentuating his discomfort into an ordeal of shame. At this moment a schoolmate, not much older than Philip, but his faded cap displaying a far more advanced stage of sophistication, passed by, bestowing a sour look upon the object of this public debasement of the masculine values of Doomington School. When he arrived home his mother laid before him a steaming plate of soup which she almost upset in her proud concentration upon the eagle-crested cap.