Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/59

 "I say it's the best. I know I wouldn't swop it for any other—or let a little bullying put me against it. And I have been bullied, if you want to know!"

"Perhaps you're proud of that?"

"I hate it, Rutter! I hate lots of things more than you think. You're in that little dormitory. You're well off. But I didn't come here expecting to find it all skittles. And I wouldn't be anywhere else if it was twenty times worse than it is!"

Rutter looked at the ungainly boy with the round shoulders and the hanging head; for the moment he was improved out of knowledge, his flat chest swelling, his big head thrown back, a proud flush upon his face. There was a touch of consciousness in the pride, but it was none the less real for that, and Jan could only marvel at it. He could not understand this pride of school; but he could see it, and envy it in his heart, even while a fresh sneer formed upon his lips. He wished he was not such an opposite extreme to Carpenter: he could not know that the other's attitude was possibly unique, that few at all events came to school with such ready-made enthusiasm for their school, if fewer still brought his own antagonism.

But, after all, Carpenter did not understand, and never would.

"You weren't in the quad just now," said Jan, grimly.

Chips looked the picture of guilt.

"I was. At the end. And I feel such a brute!"

"You? Why?" Jan was frowning at him. "You weren't one of them?"

"Of course I wasn't! But—I might have stood by you—and I didn't do a thing!"

The wish to show some spirit in his turn, the envious admiration for a quality of which he daily felt the