a Rugger rough with us?"

Several people murmured in surprise.

"I say, have you really been playing Rugger?"

"Well, great Scott!" exclaimed Michael, "there's nothing very odd in
that."

"But the Rugger roughs are all very bad men," Lonsdale protested.

"Some are," Michael admitted. "Still, it's a better game than Socker."

"But everybody at St. Mary's plays Socker," Lonsdale went on.

Michael felt for a while enraged against the pettiness of outlook that
even the admired Lonsdale displayed. How ridiculous it was to despise
Rugby football because the college was so largely composed of Etonians
and Harrovians and Wykehamists and Carthusians. It was like schoolboys.
And Michael abruptly realized that all of them sitting at this
freshmen's table were really schoolboys. It was natural after all that
with the patriotism of youth they should disdain games foreign to their
traditions. This, however, was no reason for allowing Rugby to be
snuffed out ignominiously.

"Anyway I shall go on playing Rugger," Michael asserted.

"Shall I have a shot?" suggested Lonsdale.

"It's a most devilish good game," Michael earnestly avowed.

"Tommy," Lonsdale shouted, "I'm going to be a Rugger rough myself."

"I shall sconce you, young Lonsdale, if you make such a row," said
Wedderburn severely.

"My god, Wedders, you are a prize ass," chuckled the offender.

Wedderburn whispered to the scout near him.

"Have you sconced me?" Lonsdale demanded.

The head of the table nodded.

Lonsdale was put to much trouble and expense to avenge his half-crown.
Finally with great care he took down all the pictures in Wedderburn's
room and hung in their places gaudy texts. Also for the plaster Venus of
Milo he caused to be made a miniature chest-protector. It was all very
foolish, but it afforded exquisite entertainment to Lonsdale and his
auxiliaries, especially when in the lodge they beheld Wedderburn's
return from a dinner out of college, and when presently they visited him
in his room to enjoy his displeasure.

Michael's consciousness of the sharp division in the college between
two broad sections prevented him from retiring into seclusion. He
continued to play Rugby football almost entirely in order to hear with a
delighted irony the comments of the "bad men" on the "bloods." Yet many
of these "bad men" he rather liked, and he would often defend them to
his critical young contemporaries, although on the "bad men" of his own
year he