to interfere with their spirits now, to judge of
the row they are making. Just listen!"

By this time they had reached the door of the Fourth Junior room, whence
proceeded a noise such as one often hears in a certain popular
department of the Zoological Gardens. Amid the tumult and hubbub the
two friends had not much difficulty in slipping in unobserved and
seating themselves comfortably in an obscure corner of the festive
apartment, behind a pyramid of piled-up chairs and forms.

The Junior "cricket feast" was an institution in Saint Dominic's, and
was an occasion when any one who had nerves to be excruciated or
ear-drums to be broken took care to keep out of the way. In place of
the usual desks and forms, a long table ran down the room, round which
some fifty or sixty urchins sat, regaling themselves with what was left
of a vast spread of plum-cake, buns, and ginger-beer. How these
banquets were provided was always a mystery to outsiders. Some said a
levy of threepence a head was made; others, that every boy was bound in
honour to contribute something eatable to the feast; and others averred
that every boy had to bring his own bag and bottle, and no more. Be
that as it might, the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles at present assembled
looked uncommonly tight about the jackets after it all, and not one had
the appearance of actual starvation written on his lineaments.

The animal part of the feast, however, was now over, and the
intellectual was beginning. The tremendous noise which had brought
Oliver and Wraysford on to the scene had indeed been but the applause
which followed the chairman's opening song--a musical effort which was
imperatively encored by a large and enthusiastic audience.

The chairman, by the way, was no other than our friend Bramble, who by
reason of seniority--he had been two years in the Fourth Junior, and
showed no signs of rising higher all his life--claimed to preside on all
such occasions. He sat up at the top end in stately glory, higher than
the rest by the thickness of a Liddell and Scott, which was placed on
his chair to lift him up to the required elevation, blushingly receiving
the applause with which his song was greeted, and modestly volunteering
to sing it again if the fellows liked.

The fellows did like. Mr Bramble mounted once more on to the seat of
his chair, and saying, "Look-out for the chorus!" began one of the
time-honoured Dominican cricket songs. It consisted of about t