“Let’s toss two of them together, Walker,” suggested he.

“What a cursed bully you are, Flashey!” rejoined the other.  “Up with another one.”

And so now two boys were tossed together, the peculiar hardship of which is, that it’s too much for human nature to lie still then and share troubles; and so the wretched pair of small boys struggle in the air which shall fall a-top in the descent, to the no small risk of both falling out of the blanket, and the huge delight of brutes like Flashman.

But now there’s a cry that the prepostor of the room is coming; so the tossing stops, and all scatter to their different rooms; and Tom is left to turn in, with the first day’s experience of a public school to meditate upon.

CHAPTER VII—­SETTLING TO THE COLLAR.

     “Says Giles, ’’Tis mortal hard to go,
     But if so be’s I must
     I means to follow arter he
     As goes hisself the fust.’”—­Ballad.

Everybody, I suppose, knows the dreamy, delicious state in which one lies, half asleep, half awake, while consciousness begins to return after a sound night’s rest in a new place which we are glad to be in, following upon a day of unwonted excitement and exertion.  There are few pleasanter pieces of life.  The worst of it is that they last such a short time; for nurse them as you will, by lying perfectly passive in mind and body, you can’t make more than five minutes or so of them.  After which time the stupid, obtrusive, wakeful entity which we call “I”, as impatient as he is stiff-necked, spite of our teeth will force himself back again, and take possession of us down to our very toes.

It was in this state that Master Tom lay at half-past seven on the morning following the day of his arrival, and from his clean little white bed watched the movements of Bogle (the generic name by which the successive shoeblacks of the School-house were known), as he marched round from bed to bed, collecting the dirty shoes and boots, and depositing clean ones in their places.

There he lay, half doubtful as to where exactly in the universe he was, but conscious that he had made a step in life which he had been anxious to make.  It was only just light as he looked lazily out of the wide windows, and saw the tops of the great elms, and the rooks circling about and cawing remonstrances to the lazy ones of their commonwealth before starting in a body for the neighbouring ploughed fields.  The noise of the room-door closing behind Bogle, as he made his exit with the shoebasket under his arm, roused him thoroughly, and he sat up in bed and looked round the room.  What in the world could be the matter with his shoulders and loins?  He felt as if he had been severely beaten all down his back—­the natural results of his performance at his first match.  He drew up his knees and rested his chin on them, and went over all the events of yesterday, rejoicing in his new life, what he had seen of it, and all that was to come.