never tasted such good potatoes or seen such jolly boys. They on their parts waived all ceremony, and pegged away at the sausages and potatoes, and remembering Tom's performance in goal, voted East's new crony a brick. After tea, and while the things were being cleared away, they gathered round the fire, and the talk on the match still went on; and those who had them to show pulled up their trousers and showed the hacks they had received in the good cause.
They were soon however all turned out of the school, and East conducted Tom up to his bedroom, that he might get on clean things and wash himself before singing.
"What's singing?" said Tom, taking his head out of his basin, where he had been plunging it in cold water.
"Well, you are jolly green," answered his friend from a neighbouring basin. "Why, the last six Saturdays of every half we sing of course: and this is the first of them. No first lesson to do, you know, and lie in bed to-morrow morning."
"But who sings?"
"Why everybody, of course; you'll see soon enough. We begin directly after supper, and sing till bed-time. It ain't such good fun now though as in the summer half, 'cause then we sing in the little fives' court, under the library, you know. We take our tables, and the big boys sit round and drink beer; double allowance on Saturday nights; and we cut about the quadrangle between the songs, and it looks like a lot of robbers in a cave. And the louts come and pound at the great gates, and we pound back again, and shout at them. But this half we only sing in the hall. Come along down to my study."
