Gordon found it impossible to work during hall; he fidgeted nervously. He felt as he had felt on the last day of his first term before prize-giving. He knew if he was going to get his Colts' cap he would get it early that night. Stewart always gave colours during first hall. He sat and waited nervously; work became quite impossible. He looked through _The Daily Telegraph_ and flung it aside; then picked up _The London Mail_; that was rather more in his line. There was a sound of talking down the passage. He heard Clarke's voice saying: "Yes, down there, third study down, No. 16." A second later there was a knock on the door. He managed to gulp out: "Come in." "Gratters on your Colts' cap, Caruthers. Well played!" Stewart shook hands with him. The next minute Gordon heard him walking to the school notice-board in the cloister. He was pinning up the notice. Gordon sat quite still; his happiness was too great.... No one is allowed to walk about in the studies before eight dining-hall. For a quarter of an hour there was silence in the passage. Eight struck; there was an opening of doors. A few minutes later Hunter dashed in. "Well done, Caruthers. Hooray!" "Well done, Caruthers!" "Good old A-K!" "I am so glad!" Everyone seemed pleased. Just before prayers, as he sat at the top of the day-room table, FitzMorris came over to him. "Jolly good, Caruthers. Well done." His cup was full. Foster did not get his cap.... The next day as Gordon was walking across the courts in break "the Bull" came up to him. "Gratters, Caruthers; wasn't your fault you lost. I like a man who can fight uphill. You have got the grit--well done, lad." "And yet," said Gordon to Mansell, as they passed under the school gate, "you say that man cares only for his house. Why, he only loves his house because it's a part of Fernhurst; and Fernhurst is the passion of his life!" CHAPTER VII: WHEN ONE IS IN ROME ... Generalisations are always apt to be misleading, but there was surely no truer one ever spoken than the old proverb: "When one is in Rome, one does as Rome does!" Parsons and godmothers will, of course, protest that, if you found yourselves among a crowd of robbers and drunkards, you would not copy _them_! And yet it is precisely what the average individual would do. When a boy leaves his preparatory school he has a conscience; he would not tell lies; he would be scrupulously honest in form; he would not borrow things he never meant to return; he would say nothing he would be ashamed of his mother or sister overhearing. But before this same innocent has been at school two terms he has learnt that everything except money is public property. The name in a book or on a hockey stick means nothing. Someone once said to Collins: "I say, I want to write here, are those your books?" "No, they are the books I use," was the laconic answer.