And when Stephen had not been able to answer Nasty Roche had asked: 

—­What is your father?

Stephen had answered: 

—­A gentleman.

Then Nasty Roche had asked: 

—­Is he a magistrate?

He crept about from point to point on the fringe of his line, making little runs now and then.  But his hands were bluish with cold.  He kept his hands in the side pockets of his belted grey suit.  That was a belt round his pocket.  And belt was also to give a fellow a belt.  One day a fellow said to Cantwell: 

—­I’d give you such a belt in a second.

Cantwell had answered: 

—­Go and fight your match.  Give Cecil Thunder a belt.  I’d like to see you.  He’d give you a toe in the rump for yourself.

That was not a nice expression.  His mother had told him not to speak with the rough boys in the college.  Nice mother!  The first day in the hall of the castle when she had said goodbye she had put up her veil double to her nose to kiss him:  and her nose and eyes were red.  But he had pretended not to see that she was going to cry.  She was a nice mother but she was not so nice when she cried.  And his father had given him two five-shilling pieces for pocket money.  And his father had told him if he wanted anything to write home to him and, whatever he did, never to peach on a fellow.  Then at the door of the castle the rector had shaken hands with his father and mother, his soutane fluttering in the breeze, and the car had driven off with his father and mother on it.  They had cried to him from the car, waving their hands: 

—­Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

—­Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

He was caught in the whirl of a scrimmage and, fearful of the flashing eyes and muddy boots, bent down to look through the legs.  The fellows were struggling and groaning and their legs were rubbing and kicking and stamping.  Then Jack Lawton’s yellow boots dodged out the ball and all the other boots and legs ran after.  He ran after them a little way and then stopped.  It was useless to run on.  Soon they would be going home for the holidays.  After supper in the study hall he would change the number pasted up inside his desk from seventy-seven to seventy-six.

It would be better to be in the study hall than out there in the cold.  The sky was pale and cold but there were lights in the castle.  He wondered from which window Hamilton Rowan had thrown his hat on the ha-ha and had there been flowerbeds at that time under the windows.  One day when he had been called to the castle the butler had shown him the marks of the soldiers’ slugs in the wood of the door and had given him a piece of shortbread that the community ate.  It was nice and warm to see the lights in the castle.  It was like something in a book.  Perhaps Leicester Abbey was like that.  And there were nice sentences in Doctor Cornwell’s Spelling Book.  They were like poetry but they were only sentences to learn the spelling from.