For a couple of days all would go smoothly, I imagine. The house would behave like a whipped dog. Its tail would be tucked between its legs. The prefects would make an ineffectual stand upon their dignity. Then the possibilities of the situation would become apparent. Authority spreads a veneer over the boisterous spirits of a boy of eighteen. But at heart he remains a ragster. In a couple of years' time, as an undergraduate or a medical student, he will be destroying furniture and organising preposterous bonfires. And, when authority is taken from him, he feels once again the old itch to enter the lists, to try one last throw with the marshalled forces of officialdom. It may, for instance, occur to Morcombe, the head of the house, that, though he has ceased to be a house prefect, he remains a school prefect, and that, outside the precincts of his house, he is still a force. When, therefore, he sees Jones mi. flinging stones against the cloisters, he orders Jones to appear before him that evening after roll. It is after roll, during the silence of first hall, that punishments are inflicted. And, that night, the house master, sitting in his narrow study at the end of the passage, will be astonished to hear the silence broken by a series of resounding bangs. He hurries down the passage and discovers Jones mi. straightening himself beside the water pipes, one hand ruefully stroking his trousers, while the head of the house proudly surveying his handiwork, delivers a last word of admonishment and taps his cane against his boots. 'But what on earth, Morcombe, is the meaning of this?' says the house master. 'I had occasion, sir, to beat a boy.' 'But you've no right to beat a boy. You're not a prefect any longer.' 'I was punishing him, sir, for a school and not a house offence. He was throwing stones against the cloisters. As a school prefect I felt myself bound to take official notice of his action.' 'But you know quite well, Morcombe,' the house master would answer hotly, 'that you've no right to do anything of the sort. You are only quibbling.' 'Then am I to understand, sir, that I have ceased to be a school prefect.' 'You are to understand you have no authority over any one in this house.' 'But that will make it difficult for me, sir; if I were to discover a boy in this house and a boy in another house smoking on a Sunday afternoon, I should be able to order the boy from another house to put out his cigarette and return to school at once, but the boy in my own house I should have to leave where he was. It would be suggested that I was favouring my own house.'