o kept the rota.[5]

[5] #Rota#: list.

"I can't go," said East; "I'm dead lame."

"Well, be quick, some of you, that's all," said the great man, as he
turned out of bed, and putting on his slippers, went out into the
great passage which runs the whole length of the bedrooms, to get his
Sunday habiliments out of his portmanteau.

"Let me go for you," said Tom to East. "I should like it."

"Well, thank'ee, that's a good fellow. Just pull on your trousers, and
take your jug[6] and mine. Tadpole will show you the way."

[6] #Jug#: here, a large water-pitcher.

And so Tom and the Tadpole, in night-shirts and trousers, started off
down-stairs, and through "Thos's hole," as the little buttery, where
candles and beer and bread and cheese were served out at night, was
called; across the School-house court, down a long passage, and into
the kitchen; where, after some parley with the stalwart, handsome
cook, who declared that she had filled a dozen jugs already, they got
their hot water, and returned with all speed and great caution. As
it was, they narrowly escaped capture by some privateers[7] from the
fifth-form rooms, who were on the look-out for the hot-water convoys,
and pursued them up to the very door of their room, making them
spill half their load in the passage. "Better than going down again,
though," Tadpole remarked, "as we should have had to do, if those
beggars had caught us."

[7] #Privateers#: literally, ships owned by private
individuals licensed to plunder an enemy in war.

THE "CLOSE" BEFORE CHAPEL.

By the time that the calling-over bell rang, Tom and his new comrades
were all down, dressed in their best clothes, and he had the
satisfaction of answering "here" to his name for the first time, the
praepostor of the week having put it in at the bottom of his list. And
then came breakfast, and a saunter about the close and town with East,
whose lameness only became severe when any fagging had to be done. And
so they whiled away the time until morning chapel.

It was a fine November morning, and the close soon became alive with
boys of all ages, who sauntered about on the grass, or walked round
the gravel-walk, in parties of two or three. East, still doing the
cicerone, pointed out all the remarkable characters to Tom as they
passed: Osbert, who could throw a cricket ball from the little side
ground over the rook-trees to the Doctor's wall; Gray, who had got the
Balliol scholarship,