I went out of the hall and found a tall, dark fellow bowling pebbles aimlessly about the quadrangle. I bowled a pebble, and hitting him on the back, had to apologize. It is rather odd, now I come to think about it, that the first words I ever said to Jack Ward were in the nature of an apology. We strolled out of the quadrangle into the lodge, and after he had looked at me he asked me to come up to his rooms and have some coffee. I was not at all sure that I wanted to go, but I went. He shouted to his scout at the top of a very powerful voice, and I felt that he was much more at home than I was. I determined, moreover, to shout at my scout upon the earliest possible opportunity.
"I had a brother up here," he said as soon as we were sitting by the fire, "and he gave me some tips. One of them was to shout at your scout for at least a week to show that you are not an infant, another was not to row, and the last was not to play cards all day and night. My brother's an odd kind of chap, the sort of man who doesn't know the ace of spades by sight, but it's as easy to shout as it is not to row. Your name's Marten, isn't it?"
"Yes," I replied; "how did you know that?"
"I scored when you came over last term to play for Cliborough against Wellingham. I was twelfth man to the XI., though you needn't believe it if you don't want to. It's wonderful what a crop of twelfth men there are kicking around; you may just as well say you are a liar smack out, as tell any one you are a twelfth man."
"That's only your politeness," he went on; "in a week you will be talking about me as 'that man Ward who says he was twelfth man at Wellingham.'"
I sat in his rooms and listened to him talking until eleven o'clock; for almost the first time in my life I had nothing to say, and that must have been the reason why I felt amused and uncomfortable at the same time. He seemed to know all sorts of people, and he spoke of them by their Christian names, which impressed me, and he referred to London as a place well enough to stay in for a time, but a terrible bore when one got accustomed to it. Now I had only been to London three times, and one of those could hardly be said to count since it was to see a dentist. As I went back to my rooms, I thought that my education had been neglected in many ways, and that Ward had been having a much better time than I had. But I soon changed my mind and decided that he was the kind of fellow whom I should have thought a slacker at Cliborough, and I cannot put up with a man, who when he is doing one thing always wants to be doing another.