"What are the damages?"
"A broken topper, a pair of plaids, a white waistcoat, and spats over patents."
More titters, and more glances in the direction of Harry. He knew well enough that this reference on Plunger's part was meant for him to the costume with which he had adorned himself on his coming to Garside.
"Plunger's been crowing it over me ever since I came here. I shall have to take it out of him," he thought.
The outburst of laughter that followed did not mend matters. So he hastened away, in no pleasant mood, without any regard to whither he was going. He came to a stop when he reached the cricketing-shed, in the playing-fields adjoining the school. It was this shed which was known as "The Forum." Here it was that the meeting of the Fifth was to be held.
Harry stopped and regarded it with some interest.
"Stan will be at the meeting, I suppose, and Paul Percival. Wouldn't I like to know what it's all about!"
He had an uncomfortable feeling that things weren't going quite smoothly with his cousin and Paul Percival. Bit by bit the glamour with which he had viewed the school was wearing off. He no longer regarded it through rose-coloured glasses. Plunger had lorded it over him and made fun of him; his cousin and Paul, whom he had expected to find on the same footing as himself, might have been in a different world, so great was the difference between the upper and lower forms.
The dormitory, to which he had looked forward with still greater pleasure, had proved a delusion and a snare. Often, in the bitterness of his experience in the dormitory, had he wished himself back in his warm and comfortable bed at home. He did not see—did not understand that the trials upon which he was entering were just those which were moulding him for the future. They were to test and try him, as they had tested and tried many others before him.
Some of you who read this may be going through the same experience as Harry Moncrief. Remember, rough as the experience may be, it goes to make the man in you, and it depends upon you whether you come from these trials dross or pure gold.