Heathcote returned rather sheepishly, and the two friends followed the lady indoors feeling that their entry into Templeton had been anything but triumphant.
“The idea!” said the matron, partly to herself and partly to the boys, “of his landing you and all your luggage on the pavement like that, and then going off, before I came. He knew well enough I should have seen he only got his right fare. The wretch!”
The boys did not know at the time, but they discovered it afterwards, that Mrs Partlett, the matron, had a standing feud with all the cabmen of Templeton, whose delight it was to enjoy themselves at her expense—a pastime they could not more effectively achieve than by fleecing her young charges, so to speak, under her very nose.
“Now,” said she, when presently she had recovered her equanimity, “if you’ll unlock these things, you can go and take a walk round the Quadrangle and look about you, while I unpack. The bell will ring for new boys’ tea in half an hour.”
They obeyed, and took a melancholy, but interested stroll round the great court. They read all the Latin mottoes, and were horrified to find one or two which they could not translate.
Fancy a Templeton boy not being able to understand his own mottoes!
They read the names on the different masters’ doors; and dwelt with special reverence on the door-plate of Mr Westover, in whose house they were to reside. They deciphered the carvings on the great gate, and shuddered as they saw the name of one “Joe Bolt” cut rude and deep across the forehead of the cherub who stood sentinel at the chapel portal.
All was wonder in that strange walk. The wonder of untasted proprietorship. It was their school, their quadrangle, their chapel, their elm-trees; and yet they scarcely liked to inspect them too closely, or behave themselves towards them too familiarly.
One or two boys were taking solitary strolls, like themselves. They were new boys too—nearly all of them afflicted with the same uneasiness, some more, some less.
It was amusing to see the way these new boys held themselves one to another as they crossed and passed one another in that afternoon’s promenade. There was no falling into one another’s arms in bursts of mutual sympathy. There was no forced gaiety and indifference, as though one would say “I don’t think much of the place after all.” No. With blunt English pride, each boy bridled up a bit as a stranger drew near, and looked straight in front of him, till the coast was clear.