‘Brandiston’s! Bless my soul! why, so am I,’ said Venniker; but there was something in his tone which seemed to imply that the pale, spectacled boy to whom he spoke was not quite the kind of boy whom he had expected to find in Mr. Brandiston’s house, the most popular and fashionable house at St. Anselm’s. ‘They say he’s not a bad sort, old Brandiston, but awfully strict. However, I don’t mind that so long as he’s just. I know a lot of fellows there, some of them were at my preparatory school; it’s cock house at cricket; it has got five of the eleven in it, and one of them is the captain--Stanley, you know. But, I say, what school have you been at? Were you in the eleven there? What was your top score?’ But here he paused, as if a gentle voice had reminded him that the boy at his side was not quite likely to have achieved reputation as a cricketer, and he repeated his first question quickly, ‘What school?’ Gerald Eversley was fain to confess that he had never been to school before--in fact, had never left his home; and he felt that the confession somehow lowered him in his companion’s eyes, and would lower him in the eyes of all his schoolfellows at St. Anselm’s. It certainly seemed to make a breach at the moment between his companion and himself; they walked nearly fifty yards without speaking. But again Harry Venniker’s spirits were too buoyant to make prolonged silence natural or possible. His conversation took an air of superiority--that unconscious, unintentional superiority which is the prerogative of greater knowledge or wider experience. He felt somehow as if he had spent half his life at St. Anselm’s, and, being long familiar with its practices and observances, were called upon to initiate a young novice into the secret of them. He began to realise in himself a sense of patronage, a duty of protection, to the boy who was walking at his side. Just because Gerald was so ‘green’ (as schoolboys phrase it), and wholly unversed in the ways of the world, it was his office to give him a helping hand. A boy of duller or coarser temperament than Harry Venniker, even if he had abstained from teasing or harassing such a creature, would have left him severely alone. But Harry Venniker was full of manly, generous impulses; he was conscious of strength, but not less conscious of the obligation to use it beneficently; and while he would not himself have submitted to any bullying, he would have felt it a shame to let another weaker boy be bullied without coming to his rescue.