SCHOOL DAYS
three marching up and down the middle of the school with their canes, calling out "Silence! silence!" The sixth form stood close by the door on the left, some thirty in number, mostly great, big, grown men, as Tom thought, surveying them from a distance with awe. The fifth form behind them, twice their number and not quite so big. These on the left; and on the right the lower fifth, shell, and all the junior forms in order; while up the middle marched the three præpostors.
Then the præpostor who stands by the master calls out the names, beginning with the sixth form, and, as he calls, each boy answers "Here" to his name and walks out. Some of the sixth stop at the door to turn the whole string of boys into the close; it is a great-match day, and every boy in the school, will-he, nill-he, must be there. The rest of the sixth go forward into the close to see that no one escapes by any of the side-gates.
To-day, however, being the School-house match, none of the School-house præpostors stay by the door to watch for truants of their side; there is carte blanche to the School-house fags to go where they like. "They trust to our honor," as East proudly informs Tom; "they know very well that no School-house boy would cut the match. If he did, we'd very soon cut him, I can tell you."
The master of the week being short-sighted, and the præpostors of the week small and not well up to their work, the lower-school boys employ the ten minutes which elapse before their names are called in pelting one another vigorously with acorns, which fly about in all directions. The small præpostors dash in every now and then, and generally chastise some quiet, timid boy who is equally afraid of acorns and canes, while the principal performers get dexterously out of the way; and so calling-over rolls on somehow, much like the big world, punishments lighting on wrong shoulders and matters going generally in a queer, cross-grained way; but the end coming somehow, which is, after all, the great point. And now the master of the week has finished, and locked
[ 99 ]
