While Charon’s keel grates on the beach,
He calls so clear: “Rememberest thou?”
THE UNITED IDOLATERS
His name was Brownell and his reign was brief. He came from the Central Anglican Scholastic Agency, a soured, clever, reddish man picked up by the Head at the very last moment of the summer holidays in default of Macrea (of Macrea’s House) who wired from Switzerland that he had smashed a knee mountaineering, and would not be available that term.
Looking back at the affair, one sees that the Head should have warned Mr. Brownell of the College’s outstanding peculiarity, instead of leaving him to discover it for himself the first day of the term, when he went for a walk to the beach, and saw “Potiphar” Mullins, Head of Games, smoking without conceal on the sands. “Pot,” having the whole of the Autumn Football challenges, acceptances, and Fifteen reconstructions to work out, did not at first comprehend Mr. Brownell’s shrill cry of: “You’re smoking! You’re smoking, sir!” but he removed his pipe, and answered, placably enough: “The Army Class is allowed to smoke, sir.”
Mr. Brownell replied: “Preposterous!”
Pot, seeing that this new person was uninformed, suggested that he should refer to the Head.
“You may be sure I shall—sure I shall, sir! Then we shall see!”
Mr. Brownell and his umbrella scudded off, and Pot returned to his match-plannings. Anon, he observed, much as the Almighty might observe black-beetles, two small figures coming over the Pebble-ridge a few hundred yards to his right. They were a Major and his Minor, the latter a new boy and, as such, entitled to his brother’s countenance for exactly three days—after which he would fend for himself. Pot waited till they were well out on the great stretch of mother-o’-pearl sands; then caused his ground-ash to describe a magnificent whirl of command in the air.
“Come on,” said the Major. “Run!”