“But we must be physically strong. In warfare the relative positions of the sides are always taken into account when the treaties of peace are arranged.” “What are you staring at?” said Bradwell to me. “You hook it.” So I hooked. But I knew perfectly well what they were talking about. Everybody in the Wing Dormitory did, because they often discussed the same question after they thought the rest of the chaps were asleep. It was the new mathematical master, Thompson, who troubled not only Trelawny and Bradwell but a lot of the other fellows. Trelawny had called him an “unholy bounder” the third day he was there, and that seemed to be a general opinion. Yet, with all his bounderishness, he was awfully clever, and meant well. But he didn’t know anything about chaps in a general way, and he left out his h’s and stuck them in with awfully rum effects. Thompson tried hard to be friendly to everybody, but only the kids liked him. He couldn’t understand somehow, and insulted chaps in the most frightful way, not seeing any difference between fellows at the top of the school and mere kids at the bottom. Captains of elevens were as nothing to him. He seemed to have read up boys like he read mathematics and stuff--from rotten books. He would say sometimes, “Now, you fellows, let’s ’ave a jolly game of leap-frog before the bell rings,” and things like that. Boys never do play leap-frog except in books really. Once he offered to show Trelawny how to make a kite, and he asked Chambers--_Chambers_, mind you, the Captain of the First Eleven at Cricket--whether he knew a shop where there were capital iron hoops for sale at a shilling each. I heard him say it, and he put it like this: “I say, Chambers, do you know those splendid ’oops they sell at Burford’s in ’Igh Street? It’s out of bounds, but if you like I’ll get you one this evening. They’ve got iron crooks and everything. I make this offer because you understood a little of what I said about Conic Sections this afternoon.” Thompson meant so jolly well that nobody could get in a wax with him personally; and, as I say, the kids, who didn’t see the “unholy bounder” side of him, and only knew he stood gallons of ginger-beer on half-holidays in the playing-fields, liked him better than anybody. But Trelawny took big views, and so did Bradwell, and they decided to make a definite protest.