“But a school’s a school. You can’t get out of that! It’s preposterous! You must admit that,” Mr. Brownell insisted.
They were within hail of Pot by now, and the Reverend John asked him how Affairs of State stood.
“All right, thank you, sir. How are you, sir?”
“Loungin’ round and sufferin’, my son. What about the dates of the Exeter and Tiverton matches?”
“As late in the term as we can get ’em, don’t you think, sir?”
“Quite! Specially Blundell’s. They’re our dearest foe,” he explained to the frozen Mr. Brownell. “Aren’t we rather light in the scrum just now, Mullins?”
“’Fraid so, sir: but Packman’s playin’ forward this term.”
“At last!” cried the Reverend John. (Packman was Pot’s second-in-command, who considered himself a heaven-born half-back, but Pot had been working on him diplomatically.) “He’ll be a pillar, at any rate. Lend me one of your fuzees, please. I’ve only got matches.”
Mr. Brownell was unused to this sort of talk. “A bad beginning to a bad business,” he muttered as they returned to College.
Pot finished out his meditations; from time to time rubbing up the gloss on his new seven-and-sixpenny silver-mounted, rather hot, myall-wood pipe, with its very thin crust in the bowl.