t Michael and Grainger
were not sure they cared very much for all of Lonsdale's friends from
the House. Certainly they were Etonians and members of the Bullingdon,
but so many of their names were curiously familiar from the hoardings of
advertisements that neither Michael nor Grainger could altogether
believe in their assumption of the privilege of exclusion on the ground
of inherited names.

"I think these Bullingdon bloods are rather rotters," protested Michael,
after an irritating evening of vacuous wealth.

"I _must_ ask them in sometimes," apologized Lonsdale.

"Why?" rumbled Wedderburn, and on his note of interrogation the
Bullingdon bloods were impaled to swing unannaled.

"I don't think all this sort of thing is very good for the college,"
debated Grainger. "It's all very well for you, Lonny, but some of the
second-year men behave rather stupidly. Personally I hate roulette at
St. Mary's. As for some of the would-be fresher bloods, they're like a
lot of damned cavalry subalterns."

"You can't expect the college to be handed over entirely to the rowing
push," said Lonsdale.

"That's better than turning Venner's into Tattersall's," said
Wedderburn.

The effect of enlarging the inclusiveness of Good Eggery was certainly
to breed a suspicion that it was largely a matter of externals; and
therefore among the St. Mary's men who disliked the application of money
as a social standard an inclination grew up to suppose that Good Eggery
might be enlarged on the other side. The feeling of the college, that
elusive and indefinable aroma of opinion, declared itself unmistakably
in this direction, and many Bad Men became Good Eggs.

"We're all growing older," said Michael to Wedderburn in explanation of
the subtle change manifesting itself. "And I suppose a little wiser.
Castleton will be elected President of the J.C.R. at the end of this
year. Not Tommy Grainger, although he'll be President of the O.U.B.C.,
not Sterne, although he'll be in the Varsity Eleven. Castleton will be
elected because he never has believed and he never will believe in mere
externals."

Nevertheless for all of his third year, with whatever fleeting doubts he
had about the progress of St. Mary's along the lines laid down by the
Good Eggery of earlier generations, Michael remained a very devoted
adherent of the principle. He was able to perceive something more than
mere externals in the Best Eggery. This was not merely created by money
or cor