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ecome a prefect and learned by experience that the ruler's task is not always the easiest and most enjoyable, he had always adopted the natural attitude to masters. A 'crusher' was just a person whom, if possible, one ragged. If he could hold his own, well and good: if not, he merited contempt, not mercy, and the more he was ragged the better it would be for the world at large. But when Martin discovered from his own experience that to be ragged is torture, he began to regard the doings and sufferings of the masters in a different light. It suddenly struck him, with all the vivid effect of a surprise, that these people were human beings of like passions with himself. Following quickly on that discovery came the recognition of the fact that Finney was being ragged. Reginald Finney, B.A., had not left Oxford for more than two years, but he had bravely married, and now he lived in a tiny cottage some distance from the school. Every day he bicycled in to take the Upper Fourth, Classical, and to devote occasional hours to the Upper Sixth. In time, of course, he would become a Sixth form master, for he had excellent degrees--two firsts and a 'mention' in the Ireland scholarship. He had lingered at Oxford with a view to a fellowship, but nothing turned up: at last he had been compelled by economic pressure to take the position offered him at Elfrey. Nothing could have been more disastrous. For twenty years the Upper Fourth had passed a somnolent existence under the direction of an amiable and unassuming cleric. Much to the general disgust the dear old man had, after a severe attack of pneumonia, resigned. In twenty years, as was only natural, the Upper Fourth had become an institution: terms and times continued to change, but the Upper Fourth did nothing of the kind. Fourth-formers came and went in scores, but their successors always managed to keep up the traditions of their inheritance with spirit and success. There would be four or five clever and energetic children, people rising rapidly to the Fifth, Sixth, and university scholarships; then there would be eight or ten inky and unambitious persons who would never get beyond the Fifth. And lastly there would be four or five monsters of seventeen or eighteen who were engaged in getting the greatest possible enjoyment out of their last year at school. Good athletes as a rule, they were popular in their house and merely stayed on till the fatal day of supera
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