EREMY, on his return to Thompson’s that term, found that he had been changed to what was known in the school as the “baby dorm.”
Hitherto he had been in a perfect barrack of a dormitory that contained at least twenty beds; the baby dorm was a little room with three beds, and it was a distinction to be there—a true sign that you were rising in the world. This was fully appreciate by Jeremy, and when he also discovered that his two companions were “Pug” Raikes and Stokesley, maj., the cup of his joy was full. Raikes and Stokesley were just the companions he would have chosen, short, of course, of Riley. But Riley was away in the other wing of the house, protecting, to his infinite boredom, some new kids. There was no hope of his company.
Raikes and Stokesley were both older than Jeremy; they had been at Thompson’s a year longer than he. Pug Raikes was a fat, round boy, rather like Tommy Winchester at home. It was said that he could eat more at one go than any three boys at Thompson’s put together. But, with all his fat, he was no mean sportsman. He was the best fives player in the school and quite a good bat. He had an invaluable character for games. Nothing disturbed him; he was imperturbable through every crisis.
Stokesley was the opposite of Raikes in every way—except that he was a good cricketer; and perhaps it was this very attraction of their opposites that brought them together. They had been quite inseparable ever since their first suffering from tossing in the same blanket on the first night of their arrival at Thompson’s, two and a half years before. Stokesley was a very good-looking boy, thin and tall, straight and strong, with black eyes, black hair and thick eyebrows. He was known as “Eyebrows” among his friends. He was as excitable as Raikes was apparently phlegmatic. He was always up to come new “plot” or fantasy, always in hot water, always extricating himself from the same with the airs of a Spanish grandee. It was rumored that Thompson was afraid of his father, who was a baronet. Thirty years ago, baronets counted.
Jeremy would never have been admitted into their friendship had it not been for his football. They considered him “a plucky little devil,” and prophesied that he would go far. They were a little condescending, of course, and the first night Stokesley addressed him thus:
“Look here, young Stocky; it’s jolly lucky for you being in with us. None of your cheek, and if you snore you’ll know what you’ll get. You don’t walk in your sleep, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Jeremy.
“Well, if you do, you’ll have the surprise of your life. Won’t he, Pug?”
“Rather!” said Raikes.
“And remember you’re playing footer this term for the honor of this dorm. If you play badly, you’ll get it like anything in here afterward.”
However, in a night or two there was very little to choose between them. Boys are extraordinarily susceptible to atmosphere. During the cricket term, Jeremy had been of no account at all—quite a decent kid, but no use at cricket. But before the autumn term was a week old, he was spoken as the probable scrum half that year, kid though he was. Stokesley was in the first fifteen as a forward, but his place was a little uncertain, and Pug Raikes was nowhere near the first fifteen at all and cared nothing for football.
It happened, therefore, that Jeremy was soon taken into the confidences of the two older boys, and very exciting confidences they were. Stokesley was never happy unless he had some new scheme on foot. Some of them were merely silly and commonplace, like dressing up as ghosts and frightening the boys in the lower dorm, or putting white mice in the French master’s desk, but he had, at times, impulses of real genius like the Pirates’ Society, of which there is no place here to tell, or the “cribbers’ kitchen,” a rollicking affair that gave Thompson the fits for a whole week.
Jeremy managed to keep himself out of most of these adventures. He had the gift of concentrating utterly on the matter in hand, and the matter in hand this term was getting into the first fifteen. He went in most conscientiously for training, running round big field before first hour, refusing various foods that he longed to enjoy, and refusing to smoke blotting-paper on Sunday afternoon in Parker’s Wood. People jeered at him for all this seriousness and, had he made a public business of his sporting conscience, be might have earned a good deal of unpopularity. But he said very little about it, and behaved in every way like an ordinary mortal.