of Peter was to be noticed, but Beech's large eyes raised to the other boy's face or his eager smile as he did something that Peter required of him, spoke devotion.
Beech Minimus was forced, however, for the good of his soul, to suffer especial torture between the hours of eight and nine in the evening. It was the custom that the Lower School should retire from preparation at eight o'clock, it being supposed that at that hour the Lower School went to bed. But Authority, blinded by trustful good nature and being engaged at that hour with its wine and dinner, left the issue to chance and the Gods, and human nature being what it is, the Lower School triumphed in freedom. There was a large, empty class room at the back of the building where much noise might safely be made, and in this place and at this hour followed the nightly torture of Beech and his minute companions—that torture named by the Gods, “Discipline,” by the Authorities, “Boys will be Boys,” by the Parent, “Learning to be a Man,” and by the Lower School “A Rag.” Beech and his companions had not as yet a name for it. Peter was, as a rule, left to his own thoughts and spent the hours amongst the greatcoats in the passage reading David Copperfield or talking in whispers to Bobby Galleon. But nevertheless he was not really indifferent, he was horribly conscious even in his sleep, of Beech's shrill “Oh! Comber, don't! Please, Comber, oh!” and Beech being in the same dormitory as himself he noticed, almost against his will, that shivering little mortal as he crept into bed and cowered beneath the sheets wondering whether before morning he would be tossed in sheets or would find his bed drenched in water or would be beaten with hair brushes. Peter's philosophy of standing it in silence and hitting back if he were himself attacked was scarcely satisfactory in Beech's case, and, again and again, his attention would be dragged away from his book to that other room where some small boys were learning lessons in life.
The head of this pleasant sport was one Comber, a large, pale-faced boy, some years older than his place in the school justified, but of a crass stupidity, a greedy stomach and a vicious cruelty. Peter had already met him in football and had annoyed him by collaring him violently on one occasion, it being the boy's habit, owing to his size and reputation, to
