I would not assert, however, that Val found all his difficulties at school to be surmounted so easily as the outrigger. He had to go through the average number of accidents, and perils, and overcome various wild stirrings of nature within him, before he learned, as a true Etonian does, to take pride in the penalties and hardships as well as the pleasures which distinguish his school. Val’s natural pride in his own person as Val Ross had to be met and routed by his artificial and conventional pride as a schoolboy, before, for instance, he could reconcile himself to be some one’s fag, a fate which overtook him instantly. Little Lord Hightowers, the Duke’s son, who was in the same house, took to it naturally, without any stirring of repugnance, and made his master’s toast with conscientious zest, and went his master’s errands, and accepted his share of the dainties he had fetched when that potentate was in a liberal mood, without any struggle whatever with himself. But Val had a struggle, the wild blood in his veins being unused to obedience and finding subjection hard. I am happy to say, however, that his powers were equal to the necessary sacrifice, and that he never made an exhibition of himself as he had been on the eve of doing on the day of his arrival. Time passed on, and Val grew and “mastered himself;” but sometimes did not master himself, and got into disgrace, and scrambled out again, and had no fair-weather voyage, but all a schoolboy’s troubles at their hardest. Hightowers had a very much easier time of it; he was neither proud nor ambitious, but was just as happy at the foot of his division as anywhere else, quite as happy looking on at a game as playing, and took the floggings which overtook him periodically with the most heavenly calm; whereas the mere threat of one wrought Val to the point of desperation. Hightowers was better off than Val by right of his temperament and calmer blood. He took everything much more lightly, and used to discourse to his companion on the vanity of “making a fuss” with ponderous and precocious wisdom. “Why don’t you take it easy, as I do?” said Hightowers; “what’s the good of verses, for instance? A fellow never does verses after he leaves school. If you get complained of, it don’t hurt you; and even a swishing, though it stings, it’s only for a minute--I don’t mind. There’s a house match on to-day between Guerre’s and Whiting’s. Put that rubbish away and come along.”