He disliked all the other members of the staff, but he hated Birkland. Birkland had, from the first, laughed at him; he had laughed at his clothes, at his accent, at his pretensions to being a gentleman (to do Birkland justice, if West had never pretended to be a gentleman at all, he would have admired and liked him). In fact he made him his chief and principal butt; and West, being slow of speech and (outside his own subject) slow of brain, could never reply anything at all to Birkland's sallies, and was left helpless and fuming. Comber was reciting for the hundredth time what it was that he had seen. The whole affair gave him very particular pleasure; he thought Traill a conceited, insufferable young man, who had come in and taken the football out of his hands and supplanted him completely—whenever he thought of it he boiled over with rage; but he had never been able to do anything, because Traill had never given himself away. He played football a great deal better than Comber even in his palmiest days had ever played it. Traill had given him no opportunity until now; but now at last Comber glowed with the thought of the things that he would be able to do. He intended it in no way maliciously—it was simply that the younger generation should be taught its place; let Traill once submit to Comber's rule in the football world and Comber would be pleasant enough. Then Comber did not like Birkland's sharp tongue any more than the rest of the staff did, and Birkland was a friend of Traill's. Of course, on the other side, Comber did not like Perrin either. Perrin was a pompous, pretentious fool, but in this case it was clearly Comber's duty to uphold the senior staff. He was leaning back in his arm-chair, with his chest out and one finger impressively in the air. “There they were, you know, rolling—positively rolling—on the floor. And all the breakfast things broken to bits and the coffee streaming all over the floor—you never saw anything like it. And then up they both got and looked at each other, and went out of the room without a word, brushing past Birkland and me as though we weren't there; didn't they, Birkland?” Birkland was sitting in his chair with a sad, rather cynical, smile on his face, as though he were saying, “This is their kind of life. Look at Comber there, now—how pleased he is with things! Will be happy for a month at least, and all their little private hates and jealousies are being fed just as you feed the snakes at the Zoo. And am I not just as bad as the rest? Am I not pleased, because it will give me a chance of having a hit at the rest of them?... What a set we are!” But he didn't say anything—he just sat there listening, with his contemptuous smile, to Comber.