In hall that night Lonsdale asked Michael what he had been doing, and was greatly amused by his information, so much amused that he called along the table to Grainger:
“I say, Tommy, do you know we’ve got a Rugger rough with us?”
Several people murmured in surprise.
“I say, have you really been playing Rugger?”
“Well, great Scott!” exclaimed Michael, “there’s nothing very odd in that.”
“But the Rugger roughs are all very bad men,” Lonsdale protested.
“Some are,” Michael admitted. “Still, it’s a better game than Socker.”
“But everybody at St. Mary’s plays Socker,” Lonsdale went on.
Michael felt for a while enraged against the pettiness of outlook that even the admired Lonsdale displayed. How ridiculous it was to despise Rugby football because the college was so largely composed of Etonians and Harrovians and Wykehamists and Carthusians. It was like schoolboys. And Michael abruptly realized that all of them sitting at this freshmen’s table were really schoolboys. It was natural after all that with the patriotism of youth they should disdain games foreign to their traditions. This, however, was no reason for allowing Rugby to be snuffed out ignominiously.
“Anyway I shall go on playing Rugger,” Michael asserted.