Darrell dropped asleep feeling happy and entirely peaceful. He liked Ranleigh so far, liked it immensely. If there was a great drawback to the place, if Rawlings did happen to be there, and to have shown the most unfriendly intentions, at least there were good fellows enough. Bert and Hugh, for example. What luck their being at the school! And Susanne too, and Sturton, and Harvey. Yes, Harvey held pride of place. He was Captain, lord of all he surveyed, immeasurably above the head of the humble Clive Darrell.
The violent ringing of a bell awakened Clive. He started up in bed to find daylight streaming in through the high-placed dormer windows. That same youth who had operated the gas taps on the previous night was thundering through the dormitory with his hobnailed boots, swinging a bell of generous proportions. Later, Clive gathered that he was known as a "beaky." He crossed to a door at the near end of the place and tapped heavily upon it. Then he disappeared as if in a perpetual hurry, and the ringing of the bell resounded from the other dormitories. Clive hopped out of bed, thereby arousing the inmate of the next bed. That young gentleman raised a very sleepy face from his pillow, hit rather snappishly at the hand which Clive had laid on his bed thereby to steady himself, and dropped back on his pillow.
"Hang you, waking me!" he grumbled, his eyes half shut, as if, too, there had been no such thing as a bellman. "It's always the same with new kids. Get funked when they hear a bell. Want to hop up at once. Here, you Darrell, call me when it's twenty past the hour. I give myself ten minutes the first morning, afterwards just five. Any decent fellow can wash and dress in that time."
Clive followed Sturton and a few of the others out of the dormitory, slippers on his feet and a towel about his waist.
"Swim, eh?" asked Sturton, giving him an encouraging nod.
"You're the sort of chap we want then. Hullo! Masters still fugging. None of those old games, Masters," sang out Sturton, whose manner of addressing the one in question showed that he meant to be head of his dormitory whatever happened. "Here, out you come! Fugging may be allowed at home, but at Ranleigh, never!"
The unfortunate individual who lay next to Clive, and who had declared his intention of sparing a bare ten minutes on this, the first morning, for the purpose of ablution and dressing, was dragged out of bed without ceremony.