Lovelace minor was speaking; it was the evening after the Dulbridge Match. The school had been beaten by twenty-seven points to three, by a much faster and heavier side. Meredith had been ill and could not play. Lovelace major had sprained his ankle in the first half, and though he had gone on playing was very little use. The match had all along been a foregone conclusion. But "the Bull" had lost his temper entirely.
Hunter, Mansell and Jeffries, a Colt, who ran a good chance of getting his House cap the next term, were discussing the matter. Gordon, who had come in to do Thucydides, was sitting in the background, a little shy and very interested.
"Is it true," said Jeffries, "that your brother threatened to resign the captaincy if he did not keep quiet?"
"Yes. By Jove, my brother let him have it. That's what 'the Bull' wants; he wants a fellow who's not afraid of him to stand up against him. Fernhurst has been run by him long enough. He is a splendid fellow; and when he's sane I almost love him. But he has become an absolute tyrant. Thank God, he can't ride roughshod over my brother."
Mansell here broke in. Mansell was rather fond of summing up.
"It's like this. 'The Bull's' a gorgeous fellow, he loves Fernhurst, he wants to love everyone in it. But he does not understand our House. We are not going to sweat ourselves to win some rotten Gym Cup or House Fives; we haven't time for that. We are amateurs. We play the hardest footer and the keenest cricket of all the houses, and that's where we stop. He wants us to train every minute, go for runs in the afternoon, do physical exercises before breakfast so as to become strong, clean-living Englishmen, who love their bodies and have some respect for their mind." (A roar of laughter. It was as though 'the Bull' were speaking.) "Well, I don't care a damn myself for my body or mind. All I know is that the House is going to get the Two Cock somehow, and that for six weeks we'll train like Hades, and then, when we've got the cup, we'll have a blind. We aren't pros who train the whole year round; we're amateurs!"
And Mansell was perhaps not far wrong.
"I say, you know," says Hunter, who had a cheerful way of suddenly flying off at a tangent, "talking of 'the Bull,' have you heard of the row in his house?"
Intense enthusiasm. Buller's was supposed to be "above suspicion."
"Oh, well, old Bull came round the dormitories last night and heard Peters and Fischer and some other lads talking the most arrant filth. He gave them all six in pyjamas on the spot, and Fischer is not going to be allowed to be house captain next year. Rather a jest, you know. Old Bull thought because his house was always in wonderful training that the spirit of innocence ruled over the place."