CHAPTER IV: NEW FACES
"I say, it is true; Lovelace major has left."
"Good Lord, no; is it?"
"He's not on the House list?"
"I heard he'd passed into the army at last."
"I wonder who he was sitting next."
"And we shall have that silly ass Armour captain of the House."
"Ye gods!"
A small crowd had gathered in front of the studies on the first night of the Easter term. Consternation reigned. The almost impossible had happened. Lovelace major had passed into Sandhurst at his fifth attempt, and Armour would take his place as house captain. It was a disaster. Armour was doubtless a most worthy fellow, a thoroughly honest, hard-working forward. But he had no personality. When he passed by, fags did not suddenly stop talking, as they did when Clarke or Meredith rolled past them. The term before, he had not even been a house prefect. The Three Cock, which had once seemed such a certainty, now became a forlorn hope.
"It's rotten," said Lovelace minor that night in the dormitory. "My brother didn't think he had the very ghost of a chance of passing. He'd mucked it up four times running, only the silly ass had done both the unseens with "the Bull" the week before, and he was too damned slack to alter them, and write them down wrong. He always was an ass, my brother."