“Why! What does he do?”
“I found him jumping through the Lower School dining-room window at one o'clock this morning.”
“Oh, did you!” Moy-Thompson smiled. “Where had he been?”
“I didn't ask.”
Perrin pulled his gown about him. A sudden distaste for the whole business had seized him; after another word or two he went away, back to his own rooms.
III.
Meanwhile Traill was tired and cross and out of temper with the world. He found that there was more to be said for the stay-at-home tastes of the rest of the staff than he had suspected. You couldn't, if you went gaily dancing the evening before, embrace early morning preparations with the eagerness and even the attention that it properly demanded. His mind was heavy, drowsy; he had forgotten his anger with Perrin and was only rather amused by the whole affair of the night before; but, instead of correcting Latin exercises, he sat, with his eyes gazing dreamily out of the window, his thoughts on Isabel.
He found first hour tiresome and irritating. He lost his temper for the first time that term, and went, at the end of the second hour, into the Upper School common room with a cloudy brow and dragging feet.
Anything drearier than this place it would be impossible to conceive. There was a long, red-clothed table, a black, yawning grate, a dozen stiff wooden chairs and, scattered about the room, the whole of the staff waiting for the bell to ring for third hour. This was the most irritating quarter of an hour of the day.
Several men, Comber, Clinton, Dormer, and another, were bending over the table, supervising the selection of the team for the afternoon's match. As Traill came in he heard Comber's voice: “Toggett at three-quarter is perfectly absurd. That's obviously Traill's choice. Traill may be able to play, but his knowledge of the theory of the game is absolutely nil.” Comber has resented Traill's entrance into the school football from the very first. He, although many years past his game, had hitherto led the Rugby enthusiasts of the school—he had been supreme on the Committee and had had the last word about the teams. Traill's football, however, was so obviously superior to anything that the school had had for a great many years that he was received with open arms. He had not perhaps been as judiciously submissive to Comber as he might have been, but he had always deferred his opinion and had never been goaded by Comber's caustic contradictions into ill-temper.