Mr. Brandiston, in whose house Gerald Eversley had been placed, was what is sometimes called ‘a master of the old school.’ It does not exactly appear what is the meaning of the phrase, though it may be presumed that the master, who is so described, does not altogether belong to the present school of masters. He was a tall and handsome man; in youth he must have been very handsome. Even now, when his hair was silvered and his figure a little bent, it would have been difficult to pass him without tacitly complimenting him on his appearance. He had held a boarding house at St. Anselm’s for over twenty years. It was a very popular house, and if Mr. Brandiston had a weakness, it lay in his belief that all the virtue and all the distinction of the school were centred in that one house. That a considerable part of the virtue and distinction were centred in it was undeniable. Mr. Brandiston’s critics (who were rather numerous) were wont to say of him that he did not care for any boy who was not either an aristocrat or a scholar. He would have admitted a weakness or predilection for scholars, but he would have said that the aristocrats came to his house of themselves. At all events they came. Mr. Brandiston was so upright a man that his word, especially in regard to his own house, deserved to be accepted unhesitatingly. There was only one reason--and it might not occur to everybody--for harbouring a suspicion that he would perhaps not altogether shrink from a purely accidental connection with the aristocracy. Mr. Brandiston was in politics a Radical. But there can be no doubt that the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house were proud of their house and of him. The conversation which Gerald Eversley heard on the first night of his school life exhibited that pride. If Mr. Brandiston’s boys found fault occasionally with him themselves, they never suffered a boy who was in any other house to find fault with him. It was the general fashion of the house to assume that its traditions and its methods were the best possible. This fashion the boys derived from Mr. Brandiston. They went so far as to maintain that the food provided by Mrs. Brandiston was superior to the food provided elsewhere. It was not so, and boys are critical of their food, however excellent it may be; but loyalty to the house and to Mr. Brandiston forbade the admission that other boys ate as good bread and butter as his. A master who excites this kind of loyalty is not an unsuccessful schoolmaster.