It was an answer which Harry Venniker found some difficulty in meeting, for it was an article of his moral code that parental authority ought to be respected, however irrational it might be. ‘All I can say is,’ he continued after an interval, ‘that I don’t see how you are to get on if you are always thinking things wrong.’ ‘But isn’t it wrong?’ said Gerald. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ replied Harry; ‘I suppose it is, if you look at it in that way; but it’s what everybody does, and, upon my word, I don’t see the harm of it.... However, if you object to it,’ he added, when he had meditated upon the problem for a few moments, ‘I suppose you are right, and if fellows try to bully you, I’ll let them know what I think, only you can’t exactly wear a pinafore in a house like this.’ And that was the limit of the sympathy which Gerald experienced in his first protest against public opinion. Still, it soon became known in the house that Harry Venniker, while regarding his room-fellow as ‘rather a muff, don’t you see?’ was not disposed to see him the victim of systematic persecution. He was reported to have ‘punched’ the red head of the boy Thornton, who had intruded with malicious purpose into the room, whistling the tune of the song which had proved fatal to poor Gerald’s peace of mind, and making two or three mimetic pauses in the first lines of the chorus. This tacit championship was of the highest value to Gerald Eversley. For boys possess a singular faculty (if they care to exercise it) of making other boys’ lives intolerable. They are masters of the art of annoyance and irritation. They understand how by speech, and still more by silence, to convey the killing sense of their displeasure. I will undertake to say that half a dozen small boys, without committing any such action as could bring them within reach of the law, will drive a schoolfellow to the verge of despair. But against this organised, though indeterminate, persecution, the voice of one boy, if clear and courageous, possesses great weight. Gerald Eversley owed more than he was aware of to the stalwart, if somewhat unsympathetic, defence of Harry Venniker. But for that, it is probable that his social error in coming to school with ‘stick-up’ collars, and his moral error (for so it was widely considered) in refusing to sing a song selected in due order by the captain of Hall, would have brought him into considerable trouble. As it was, however, the boys did nothing worse than leave him very much to himself; they would look at one another in a knowing way, and perhaps shrug their shoulders, when he passed, or one of them would nudge his arm at dinner to prevent his eating with absolute equanimity, or ask him the Latin for a saint, or inquire if his mother or his sisters knew that he was out; once or twice he found his boots filled with water in the morning, or a blot of ink upon his carefully written exercise; or his hat was hidden away, to make him late for chapel; or