“Three cheers for Miss Violet!”
“Three cheers for the governors!”
Then again, in regular order, the captain of each house stepped forward and called for three cheers for his own house, all of which were vigorously given—each house being on its mettle to drown all the others.
Last in the list Ainger stepped forward and called for “Three cheers for Railsford’s!”
Then Arthur and Dig and the rest of the house got upon their chairs and put their backs into the shout; and everyone allowed that, whatever else Railsford’s wasn’t first in, it could carry off the palm for noise. At the end of the third cheer a voice called out,—
“One more for the cock house!”
Whereat Arthur and Dig and the rest of them got on their chairs again and yelled till the roof rang.
Then amid a multitude of promiscuous cheers for “the captain,” “the prefects,” “the cook,” “Jason,” “the school cat,” “Thucydides!” and finally for “Dulce Domum!” Grandcourt broke up for the holidays.
Let you and me, friendly reader, say good-bye here amid all the cheery bustle and excitement of the crowded quadrangle. It is better to part so than to linger about talking morality till the great square is empty—till the last of the cabs has rumbled away out of hearing—till the echoes of our own voices come back and startle us from behind the chapel buttresses. If we wait till then, we part sadly and miss the promise of a meeting again. But if we part now, while Arthur, on the box of his cab, with his “people” safely stowed inside, is whooping his noisy farewells right and left—while Smedley, with his Balliol scholarship in his pocket, is leaving Grandcourt for good, and casting his last shy look up at the doctor’s window—while Messrs Roe, Grover, and Railsford are talking cheerfully of their Highland trip in August—while monsieur, humming Partant pour la Syrie, is hurrying away to his own dear France and his still dearer little girls—while Ainger and Barnworth, the old and the new captains of Railsford’s, are grasping hands at the door—if we part now, we part not as those who bid a long farewell, but as those who think and talk of meeting again.