The three sixth-formers slowly walked up the aisle magnificent in grey flannel trousers, slit coats, First Eleven collars, and with pink carnations in their buttonholes. It is impossible to describe the astonishment and terror that this spectacle caused. Everyone looked at the captain of the First Eleven; he had gone quite white. But by this time the masters had come in, followed by the choir, and the opening hymn, though raggedly sung, ended the tension. When chapel emptied it always emptied according to ‘school order,’ that is, according to position in work; the sixth form went out first. The bloods were not high in school order, so Mansfield, Waller and Taylor had the start of them. After chapel on Sunday the custom in the winter terms was for people to meet and gossip in the school library; so it was here that Mansfield, Waller and Taylor went. They had buttonholed a talkative master and drawn him with them into the library, and there they kept him talking until dinnertime. If the bloods had had courage to do anything desperate they would have had to do it at once, but they could not make a scene in the presence of a master. Mansfield, Waller and Taylor went down to their houses for dinner still talking to the master. After this they kept together as much as possible and the school, particularly the lower school, which had always chafed under the dress regulations, made heroes of them, and began scoffing at the bloods as weak-kneed. Finally the captain of the eleven was stupid enough to complain to the headmaster about this breach of school conventions, asking for permission to enforce First Eleven rights by disciplinary measures. The headmaster, who was a scholar and disliked the games tradition, refused his request. He said that the sixth form deserved as distinctive privileges as the First Eleven. The sixth form would therefore in future be entitled to hold what they had assumed. After this the prestige of the bloods declined greatly. At Raymond’s encouragement I pulled myself together and my third year found things very much easier for me. My chief persecutor, the Irishman, had left. It was said that he had had a bad nervous breakdown. He wrote me a hysterical letter, demanding my forgiveness for his treatment of me, saying at the same time that if I did not give this forgiveness, one of his friends (whom he mentioned) was still in the house to persecute me. I did not answer the letter. I do not know what happened to him. The friend never bothered. VIII