im to refer jocularly to my late hat and boots,
topics which I had not the spirit to resent.

As soon as these personal matters were disposed of, I was tacitly
admitted as a member of the honourable faggery, and invited to express
my opinion on a matter which had been engaging the attention of the
fraternity before I arrived.

"We were thinking," said my late travelling companion, whom his friends
addressed as Langrish, "that it would be a score to get up a
Philosophical Society in the school. What do you say?"

"What to do?" I ventured to ask.

"Oh, discussions, and picnics, and larks. What do you suppose we
_should_ do? There's a senior club of the kind already. They go in for
dry rot--science and history, and that sort of thing. Awful slow, and
nobody knows what he's talking about. I flatter myself _we_ should."

"We ought to draw up some rules, oughtn't we?" said Trimble.

"Rather--forge ahead."

Whereupon we crowded solemnly round the small table and put our heads
together.

One of the party, by the way, answering to the name of Purkis, appeared
to be the leading spirit, and made the most valuable suggestions.

"Rule 1," dictated he, "That this club be called the Low Heathen
Conversation Club."

"Hold on," said Trimble; "you've got club coming twice in the same
sentence. Bad grammar."

"Besides, I thought there was to be something about philosophy,"
suggested Langrish.

"And keeping out the day cads," said Warminster, another of the party.

"Of course, if you make the rule long enough," said Purkis, with lofty
contempt, "you can get something in it about the man in the moon."

"But," said I, thinking to make a little joke, just to show I had no
ill-feeling, "we don't want him in the club, do we?"

"No," said Langrish, who had evidently been on the look-out for his
chance; "no more do we want pretty Sarah's washerwoman; do we, you
chaps?"

I subsided gracefully. The time was not yet ripe, evidently, for me to
assert myself.

"I tell you what," said Warminster; "what's the use of every one making
each rule? Let old Purkis make the first, and I'll make the second, and
Langrish the third, and so on. It will be ever so much quicker, and
give each chap a fair innings."

It seemed a good idea, and as it allowed Purkis's rule to stand
unchallenged, he acquiesced.

So in due time the following wonderful code of rules was drawn up and
adopted--

1. That this club be called the Low Heath