orned their cubicles with family
photographs, presumably because they were content with a hasty glance
at their parents and sisters during the shamefully few seconds in which
the acts of washing and dressing were completed: their actresses they
pinned inside their workroom desks, or, if they were study owners, hung
on their walls so that the long watches of the day were not
uncomforted. It struck Martin that here was another gap: he had not
brought with him any family photographs, and he expected that to seem
unfilial would be very bad form: nor had he a favourite actress. He
would have, he saw, to ask for his family photographs to be sent with
the Eton collars and the sardines, which he had discovered at tea to be
essential to the good life. The actress problem could be dealt with
later.

The rules of the dormitory were strict. Lights were turned out at ten
and no one could leave his cubicle without permission. No talking was
allowed after 'Lights out.' But to-night things were disorganised. In
the first place, Moore was the prefect on duty, an occurrence which
usually meant that no one was on duty, for it was Moore's habit to go
back to his study to find a book and then to forget about returning.
And besides it was only natural that at the beginning of term
discipline should not be established in all its accustomed rigour.
Everyone, except the six new boys, had plenty to say, and in the
prolonged absence of Moore they passed freely about from cubicle to
cubicle. It was already a quarter past ten.

Martin, of course, lay quietly in bed gazing at the cracks in the
plaster above him and wondering how long it would be before the lights
went out and sleep became possible. His thoughts shifted painfully
from chapel to collars, from collars to the Lower Fifth. This invasion
of a new world which had seemed only a week ago to be so supreme an
adventure was nothing but a nuisance and an agony. His sole comfort
lay in the reflection that bed, even a hard, knobbly, school bed is an
excellent place: here at least there was nothing to find out.

Suddenly he realised that a conversation was in progress close to the
curtain of his cubicle. Cullen, his neighbour in the dormitory, was
talking to a friend called Neave: already he had marked them both as
giants of a year's standing, youthful bloods of surpassing glory.

"I've got a ripping photo of Sally Savoy," said Cullen.

"She's a bit of fluff for you," answered Neav