Nevertheless we became silently inimical. He ceased to look bewildered; with an English cunning he had already found that an air of nonchalance pays best. And his sort of "Oh, d'you think so?" air began to irritate me; it was no good doing my man of the world on a man who obviously made a point of not believing what I said. I rather felt in speaking to him as an irritated and fussy foreign ambassador must feel before the well-bred imperturbability of Mr. Balfour; I wasn't then old enough to know I felt like that, but myself and study had reasonable grounds for deciding that "that sloppy-haired new long bug was a conceited young swine," and that he was trading rather too much on being at the bottom of the school. There was a dark-haired, sallow-faced youth, one Marsden, who had come the same term as we three; he had at first shared our study, but had been fired out for being a cub. And, by intimating to the House-Master that if he was put back in our study, new bugs or no, we wouldn't answer for his mother's knowing him, we had fired him out in such a way that he couldn't ever get back. But he didn't try to get back. He just went into the newest bug's study, and there, when Louis came the next term, made firm and fast friends with him. Marsden disliked me much more than he disliked any one else, as I had been the instigator of his ejection from our study, and so the silent and contemptuous enmity with which Louis eyed me wasn't very strange. Those two made common cause in their indifference to anything we three at the head of the table might say; and soon, things came to such a pass that we had to put lumps of salt into the potato dish before handing it down to them. And even that didn't seem to have much effect, for one tea-time I distinctly heard a murmur resembling "Armenian Jew" escape from Marsden's lips; that, of course, couldn't be borne, and I couldn't then explain to him that there was no such person as an Armenian Jew for I wasn't myself quite certain about it--all I knew was that I wasn't a Jew, and it wasn't Marsden who was going to call me one in vain. So there and then I upped and threw my pot of jam at his head, striking him neatly just above the right eye; I didn't do it in anger, I didn't know why I did it, though now I know it was done through a base passion for notoriety, which I still have, though in a less primitive manner. I certainly got notoriety then, and also six cuts from a very supple cane and a Georgic on which to work off my ardour.