By this time they were ascending the short, steep road which leads to the crest of St. Anselm’s hill. Harry Venniker had not long finished speaking when they came in sight of Mr. Brandiston’s house--it juts out a little into the road just beyond the chapel--and without another word they walked to the door of it and entered, passing through a group of boys who were clustered by the entrance, and who stared at them with the supercilious curiosity of older and superior beings at the sight of a new boy. ‘I say,’ cried Harry Venniker, who had been holding a brief but earnest consultation with the butler, ‘you fellow, Eversley; we’re in a room together, No. 13; come along, let’s have a look at it.’ And so saying, he hurried the butler and Gerald up two flights of stairs and along a narrow, tortuous passage, actually known in the language of the house as the ‘corkscrew,’ to a room which bore the external signs of being intended for the conjoint but exclusive occupation of two boys. The walls were bare; for its former occupants, whether they had left the school or had only migrated to some better room in the house, had bequeathed to their successors no traces of decorations except the nails which had supported their pictures and now remained without any apparent use, like ghosts of an ancient and departed glory; but it contained two beds, which it was the fashion to fold up during the day and let down at night, two chairs, two tables deeply scarred with the names of several generations of boys who had occupied the room, two bookcases, two washstands and basins--in a word, all the conventional phenomena of a dual existence. The butler--a venerable character in the house--stood quietly by while the two boys surveyed the scantily furnished apartment, the virgin soil, as it were, which they were destined to cultivate; then he claimed the privilege of long experience by giving vent to the hope that they would ‘chum along all right together,’ and left them alone, telling them they must come down to the hall when the bell rang for prayers.