O'Rane rose from his chair as though the interview were ending.
"Guess I've stuck out worse than this in my time," he observed.
Loring waved him back to his chair. "What's the difficulty?" he demanded. "Why won't you play footer like everybody else?"
O'Rane snorted contemptuously.
"I came here to be educated, not to kick a dime ball about."
We were in the days prior to "Stalky and Co."; "The Islanders" lay in the womb of time; never before had I heard public-school sport criticized, at any rate inside a public school. Loring expounded the approved defence of games: their benefit to health, the fostering of a communal spirit, good temper in defeat, moderation in triumph. For a man who had abandoned Big Side on the day when attendance there ceased to be compulsory for him, the exposition was astonishingly eloquent.
"Guess I didn't come here for that," was all O'Rane would answer.
"Afraid you'll find it's one of the incidentals," Loring rejoined. "I've been through it, Oakleigh's been through it, we've all been through it. It's part of the discipline of the place—like fagging. You don't refuse to do that."
"I'd cleaned a saucepan or two before I came here. 'Sides, that doesn't take time like footling away an afternoon on Little End."