So East and Tom, the Tadpole, and one or two more, became a sort of young Ishmaelites, their hands against every one, and every one’s hand against them.  It has been already told how they got to war with the masters and the fifth form, and with the sixth it was much the same.  They saw the prepostors cowed by or joining with the fifth and shirking their own duties; so they didn’t respect them, and rendered no willing obedience.  It had been one thing to clean out studies for sons of heroes like old Brooke, but was quite another to do the like for Snooks and Green, who had never faced a good scrummage at football, and couldn’t keep the passages in order at night.  So they only slurred through their fagging just well enough to escape a licking, and not always that, and got the character of sulky, unwilling fags.  In the fifth-form room, after supper, when such matters were often discussed and arranged, their names were for ever coming up.

“I say, Green,” Snooks began one night, “isn’t that new boy, Harrison, your fag?”

“Yes; why?”

“Oh, I know something of him at home, and should like to excuse him.  Will you swop?”

“Who will you give me?”

“Well, let’s see.  There’s Willis, Johnson.  No, that won’t do.  Yes, I have it.  There’s young East; I’ll give you him.”

“Don’t you wish you may get it?” replied Green.  “I’ll give you two for Willis, if you like.”

“Who, then?” asked Snooks.  “Hall and Brown.”

“Wouldn’t have ’em at a gift.”

“Better than East, though; for they ain’t quite so sharp,” said Green, getting up and leaning his back against the mantelpiece.  He wasn’t a bad fellow, and couldn’t help not being able to put down the unruly fifth form.  His eye twinkled as he went on, “Did I ever tell you how the young vagabond sold me last half?”

“No; how?”

“Well, he never half cleaned my study out—­only just stuck the candlesticks in the cupboard, and swept the crumbs on to the floor.  So at last I was mortal angry, and had him up, and made him go through the whole performance under my eyes.  The dust the young scamp made nearly choked me, and showed that he hadn’t swept the carpet before.  Well, when it was all finished, ‘Now, young gentleman,’ says I, ’mind, I expect this to be done every morning—­floor swept, table-cloth taken off and shaken, and everything dusted.’  ‘Very well,’ grunts he.  Not a bit of it though.  I was quite sure, in a day or two, that he never took the table-cloth off even.  So I laid a trap for him.  I tore up some paper, and put half a dozen bits on my table one night, and the cloth over them as usual.  Next morning after breakfast up I came, pulled off the cloth, and, sure enough, there was the paper, which fluttered down on to the floor.  I was in a towering rage.  ‘I’ve got you now,’ thought I, and sent for him, while I got out my cane.  Up he came as cool as you please, with his hands in his pockets.  ’Didn’t I tell you to shake