“You’re quite safe,” announced the Major, patting four fingers which he had suddenly discovered on the sleeve of his Burberry. “That one is too far away to hurt us. There will probably be more, but Fritz won’t shell away from the road. His imagination is not elastic.”
“What about Frances and Captain Cruttenden?” said Helen. “They are nearer the road than we are. Would that shell be able—?”
Major Floyd rubbed his misty monocle and examined the two figures to his right.
“They don’t appear to have heard it,” he announced, and shook his head mournfully.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE LINE
Most of us in our extreme youth, before we leave home and adventure upon the Great Unknown of school life—the most formidable ordeal, by the way, that the majority of us ever have to face—endeavour to prepare ourselves for what we imagine lies before us by a course of study.
We devour stories about schools and schoolboys, with an application most unusual in the young. We have all the tenderfoot’s fear of being considered a tenderfoot, so we take pains to acquire the schoolboy tone; schoolboy atmosphere; schoolboy slang. The exploits of the hero after he becomes “Cock of the School”—whatever that may be—and leads the football team to victory, are dismissed by us as too lofty and distant for our achievement. We are much more interested—more painfully interested—in his experiences as a freshman or fag. We endeavour to pick up tips as to what a boy entering school for the first time should do, and more particularly what he should not do, in order to avoid being tossed in a blanket or sent to Coventry, or labelled “sissy,” or “cry-baby”—and all the other vague terrors which have kept prospective Cocks of the School awake at night since the dawn of Education.
This intensive course of self-preparation has one drawback. None of the things described in the books ever happen at the school to which we are ultimately sent. We have plenty of surprises, plenty of rough experiences; but none quite of the kind anticipated.