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Updated: May 29, 2025
It had been painted by the sister of a fellow at Cliborough, and when he was frightfully hard-up he arranged a raffle, and everybody said I was jolly lucky to win it. I was even bid fifteen shillings for the picture by the original owner, but as I suspected that he wanted to get up another raffle I refused the offer. When I saw the thing hanging on my wall I wished that I had not been such a fool.
It was such a complete change for him to come from Cliborough, where he was easily the most important boy in the school, to Oxford, where he was practically nobody at all, that I wondered how he would like it. So many freshers who have been important at school think they can bring their importance with them, but they make the very greatest mistake.
For a solid hour I unpacked things which I had thought beautiful in my study at Cliborough and put them about my room, but somehow or other most of them did not seem as beautiful as I had thought them, and there was a picture I had won it in a shilling raffle, and been very proud of it which filled me with sorrow.
A fresher who thinks a lot of himself, and lets other men know that he does, is not likely to do anything but get in his own way. Foster never had put on any side, but he had been accustomed to manage things at Cliborough, and I asked him how he liked being nobody again, as he had been when he first went to school.
A few men called from other colleges who had known me at Cliborough, or had been asked to see something of me because their people knew mine. I got to know the oddest lot of men imaginable, and as long as they looked clean and did not try to rush me into helping them to reform the world, I liked them all.
There were two or three freshers from Cliborough to whom I had scarcely spoken during my last two years at school, and these fellows all sat together and enjoyed themselves, while I counted for nothing whatever. I began to learn the lesson that being in the Cliborough XI. and XV. was not a free passport to glory.
Edwardes, it seemed to me that I might have been more peaceful, but the fact remains that he and I were not made for each other. Until the time began to grow near for me to go down from Oxford I never felt as strong an affection for the 'Varsity as I had for Cliborough. I think the reason was that Oxford is such a huge place, that it took me some time to realize how splendid it is.
That told me all I wanted to know, and though he was not in very good spirits for a day or two he soon recovered, and I believe that Nina and he enjoyed themselves more than they ever had since they began to wonder whether they were grown up or not. Before going back to Oxford Fred and I went to stay with Mr. Sandyman, our old house-master at Cliborough.
I started that game because I had once told something really funny to a lot of fellows at Cliborough, and they went and spread it about so quickly that I could never find any one else who did not know it, which was simply nothing less than a fraud. But as soon as I had got fairly into my tale I saw that both Foster and Murray were interested, and at the end of it I asked them what I was to do.
At Cliborough I had established a record by being the first boy who had tried to get into the school choir and failed, but the man who made me sing "Ah, ah, ah," until I really could not go on any longer had told me that I should have a voice some day.
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