"You owe it to the College," said the Warden, drily incisive. Then he added: "Why must you go so quickly, Mr. Paragon? You are not yet ready for things outside." Peter was suddenly grateful. He was, at any rate, understood. "I will try with my whole soul," he ardently exclaimed. "Meanwhile," the Warden concluded with a smile, "notes on gobbets need not be written in the manner of La Rochefoucauld. There isn't time." Peter, passing into the quadrangle, met Dundoon. He was in riding breeches. He lived in riding breeches, till they became for Peter a symbol of well-born inanity. Moreover, he was freely indulging his principal pleasure--namely, he was vigorously cracking a riding-whip, making the walls ring with snap after snap. "Hullo," he said as Peter passed within careful distance. "Idiot," muttered Peter between his teeth. "Freshly roasted by the Wuggins--What?" "Dundoon, you're a damned nuisance. Put it away." "It's most important, Peter Pagger. It's most devilish important. M.F.H.--What?" Dundoon cracked his whip rather more successfully than usual. The snap tingled in Peter's brain. In a fit of temper he sprang at Dundoon, and wrenched the whip from his hand. Dundoon looked at Peter's gleaming eyes as though he had seen the devil. "What's this? In the name of Hell what _is_ it?" he said at last. "I'm sorry," said Peter with withering humility. "Here is your whip." He handed it back to Dundoon, who took it cautiously. Peter moved away. But Dundoon arrested him. "Peter Pagger," he said thoughtfully, "do I understand that you've been rude to me?" "As you please." "Because you'll be ragged, that's all. You'll be jolly well ragged." The party of Dundoon was strolling up, and was invited to hear the news. "Here, you fellows. Peter Pagger has been very rude to me. What shall we do to him? Peter Pagger has been roasted by the Wuggins for his naughty life in London. Third stocking from the right--What?" Peter strode off boiling with anger. Dundoon belonged to a set which derived principally from a famous English school. It was a set traditionally opposed to the intellectuals; indeed these two principal sets fed fat an ancient grudge. College humour mainly consisted at this time in the invention of scandalous histories by members of one set concerning members of the other. Needless to say the Paggers far excelled the Dundoons in the pith of their libels, so that the Dundoons had often to assert their supremacy in other ways. Upon one cold winter night, for example, the Paggers, one and all, retiring to rest had missed a necessary vessel. Thick snow covered the garden quadrangle, of which the Dundoons had built an immense mound upon the lawn. After three days a thaw set vigorously in, and the Junior Prior, looking from his window in the dawn, was shocked by an unutterable stack of College china mocking the doubtful virginity of the snow. The enterprises of the Dundoons were not subtle.