Two nights Irving spent all alone in the Sixth Form dormitory; it amused him to walk up and down the corridors with the list of those to whom rooms there had been assigned.  “Collingwood, Westby, Scarborough, Morrill, Anderson, Baldersnaith, Hill”—­some of them had occupied these rooms as Fifth Formers, and Irving had asked Mr. Barclay about them.

Louis Collingwood was captain of the school football team; Scarborough was captain of the school crew.

“Neither of them will give you any trouble,” said Barclay.  “Scarborough used to be a cub, but he has developed very much in the last year or two, and now he and Collingwood are the best-liked fellows in the school.  They have a proper sense of their responsibility as leaders of the school, and are more likely to help you than to make trouble.  Morrill is their faithful follower, though a little harum-scarum at times.  Westby—­” the master hesitated over that name and looked at Irving with a measuring glance—­“Westby is what you might call the school jester.  He’s very popular with the boys—­not equally so with all the masters.  Personally I’m rather fond of him.  He’s almost too quick-witted sometimes.”

That evening Barclay took the new master home to dine with him.  Mrs. Barclay was as cordial and as kind as her husband; Irving began to feel more than satisfied with his surroundings.

“Pity you’re not married, Upton,” Barclay said, half jokingly.  “You’d escape keeping dormitory if you were—­which you’ll find the meanest of all possible jobs.  And then if your wife’s the right kind—­the boys have to be pretty decent to you in order to keep on her good side.”

Mrs. Barclay laughed.  “I suppose that’s the only reason they’re pretty decent to you, William!—­You’ll find it easy, Mr. Upton,—­for the reason that they’re a pretty decent lot of boys.”

The next day at noon the old boys began to arrive.  Irving was coming out of the auditorium, where he had been correcting the last set of examination papers, when a barge drew up before the study building and boys clutching hand-bags tumbled out and hurried into the building to greet the rector.

Irving stood for a few moments looking on with interest:  other barges kept coming over the hill, interspersed with carriages, in which a few arrived more magnificently.

It occurred to Irving that perhaps he had better hasten to his dormitory in order to be on hand when his charges should begin to appear; he was just starting away when three boys arm in arm rushed out of the study building.  They came prancing up to him, all smiles and twinkles; they were boys of seventeen or eighteen.  They confronted him, blocking his path; and the one in the middle, a slim, straight fellow in a blue suit, said,—­

“Hello, new kid!  What name?”

A blush of embarrassment mounted in Irving’s cheeks; feeling it, he conceived it all the more advisable to assert his dignity.  So he said without a smile, in a constrained voice,—­