"So it will. But after all, you see, what does it matter to him? He gets rusticated; takes his name off with a flourish of trumpets--what then? He falls back on 5,000L a year in land, and a good accumulation in consols, runs abroad or lives in town for a year. Takes the hounds when he comes of age, or is singled out by some discerning constituency, and sent to make laws for his country, having spent the whole of his life hitherto in breaking all the laws he ever came under. You and I, perhaps, go fooling about with him, and get rusticated. We make our friends miserable. We can't take our names off, but have to come cringing back at the end of our year, marked men. Keep our tails between our legs for the rest of the time. Lose a year at our professions, and most likely have the slip casting up against us in one way or another for the next twenty years. It's like the old story of the giant and the dwarf, or like fighting a sweep, or any other one-sided business." "But I'd sooner have to fight my own way in the world after all; wouldn't you?" said Tom. "H-m-m!" said the Captain, throwing himself back in the chair, and smiling; "can't answer off hand. I'm a third year man, and begin to see the other side rather clearer than I did when I was a freshman like you. Three years at Oxford, my boy, will teach you something of what rank and money count for, if they teach you nothing else." "Why, here's the Captain singing the same song as Hardy," thought Tom. "So you two have to go to the proctor to-morrow?" "Yes." "Shall you go? Drysdale won't." "Of course I shall. It seems to me childish not to go; as if I were back in the lower school again. To tell you the truth, the being sent for isn't pleasant; but the other I couldn't stand." "Well, I don't feel anything of that sort. But I think you're right on the whole. The chances are that he'll remember your name, and send for you again if you don't go; and then you'll be worse off." "You don't think he'll rusticate us, or anything of that sort?" said Tom, who had felt horrible twinges at the Captain's picture of the effects of rustication on ordinary mortals. "No; not unless he's in a very bad humour. I was caught three times in one night in my freshman's term, and only got an imposition." "Then I don't care," said Tom. "But it's a bore to have been caught in so seedy an affair; if it had been a real good row, one wouldn't have minded so much." "Why, what did you expect? It was neither better nor worse than the common run of such things." "Well, but three parts of the crowd were boys." "So they are always--or nine times out of ten at any rate." "But there was no real fighting; at least, I only know I got none." "There isn't any real fighting, as you call it, nine times out of ten." "What is there, then?"