Dick moved his chair beside David’s, and talked to him a little about the prospects of sugar, and whether the Cuban planters were going to “down” all the others; but, finding him unresponsive, he turned eagerly to Arnold, saying, “I say! I lunched with Paget-Clark the other day, and he told me this year’s Rugby fifteen will be one of the strongest we’ve ever had. There’s a chap called Girdlestone who, they say, is a perfect genius as half-back, and they’ve got a new beak who’s an international and a marvellous coach. He says....”
“Anyhow, their eleven was jolly good this year. They did extraordinary well at Lord’s.” There was a slightly reproving note in Arnold’s voice, as if it were sacrilege to talk about football when one might talk about cricket. As a matter of fact, he was much more interested in football, but he resented that his father should be able to give him any information about Rugby.
David smiled to himself as he thought of his own school—the Inverness Academy.
They had thought themselves very “genteel” with their school colours and their Latin song beginning:
Floreat Academia
Mater alma, mater pia.
And indeed this gentility had been rubbed into them every morning on their way to school by bare-footed laddies, who shouted after them:
“Gentry puppies, ye’re no verra wice,
Ye eat your parritch wi’ bugs an’ lice.”