sense of justice
rising to the surface at once. "I wasn't lammed for cutting the desk at
all: it was for doing it after I had been told not to."

"It's the same thing," said Dilly, with feminine disregard for legal
niceties.

"Same thing? Rot! Fat lot you know about it, Dilly. It's a rum thing,"
he added to me in a reflective bawl, "but women never can understand the
rules of any game. Stinker is a bargee, but he was quite right to lam
me. It was for disobedience; and disobedience is cheek; and no master
worth his salt will stand cheek. So Stinker says, and he is right for
once."

Gerald is the possessor of a bosom friend, an excessively silent and
rather saturnine youth of about his own age. His name is Donkin, and he
regards Gerald, so far as I can see, with a grim mixture of amusement
and compassion. He pays frequent visits to my house, as his father is a
soldier in India; and he is much employed by the Twins for corroborating
or refuting the more improbable of their brother's reminiscences.

Robin soon made friends with the boys. Like most of their kind, their
tests of human probity were few and simple: and having discovered that
Robin not only played Rugby football, but had on several occasions
represented Edinburgh University thereat, they straightway wrote him
down a "decent chap" and took the rest of his virtues for granted.

It came upon them--and me too, as a matter of fact--as rather a shock
one evening, when Robin, during the course of a desultory conversation
on education in general, suddenly launched forth _more suo_ into a
diatribe against the English Public School system.

English boys, he pointed out, were passed through a great machine, which
ground up the individual at one end and disgorged a mere type at the
other--("Pretty good type too, Robin," from me),--they were taught to
worship bodily strength--("Quite right too!" said my herculean
brother-in-law),--they were herded together under a monastic system;
they were removed from the refining influence of female society--(even
the imperturable Donkin snorted at this),--and worst of all, little or
nothing was done to eradicate from their minds the youthful idea that it
is unmanly to read seriously or think deeply.

I might have said a good deal in reply. I might have dwelt upon the fact
that the English Public School system is not so hard upon the stupid
boy--which means the average boy--as that of more strenuous
forcing-houses of intellect ab