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"Here's Macrea's house," said Stalky, his eye at the crack of the third cupboard. "I can see Barnes's name on his trunk. Don't make such a row, Beetle! We can get right to the end of the Coll. Come on!... We're in King's house now I can see a bit of Rattray's trunk. How these beastly boards hurt one's knees!" They heard his nails scraping, on plaster. "That's the ceiling below. Look out!
"Hang it, man, I shoved her the full length of my arm and Beetle's brolly. That must be about six feet. She's bung in the middle of King's big upper ten-bedder. Eligible central situation, I call it. She'll stink out his chaps, and Hartopp's and Macrea's, when she really begins to fume. I swear your Uncle Stalky is a great man. Do you realize what a great man he is, Beetle?"
Straightway Stalky chalked a large cross, with "Lord, have mercy upon us," on the door, and left King to find it. The wind shifted that night and wafted a carrion-reek into Macrea's dormitories; so that boys in nightgowns pounded on the locked door between the houses, entreating King's to wash.
Macrea's house lay next to Prout's, King's next to Macrea's, and Hartopp's beyond that again. Carefully locked doors divided house from house, but each house, in its internal arrangements the College had originally been a terrace of twelve large houses was a replica of the next; one straight roof covering all.
"Here in the gym till you are fit an' capable to be taken out on the road." The Sergeant threw a chest. "For all the Northam cads to look at? Not good enough, Foxibus." "Well, we won't make a point of it. You learn your drill first, an' later we'll see." "Hullo," said Ansell of Macrea's, shouldering through the mob. "What's all this about a giddy cadet-corps?"
Next morning a boy in that dormitory confided to his bosom friend, a fag of Macrea's, that there was trouble in their midst which King would fain keep secret. But Macrea's boy had also a bosom friend in Prout's, a shock-headed fag of malignant disposition, who, when he had wormed out the secret, told told it in a high-pitched treble that rang along the corridor like a bat's squeak.
"Extraordinary! Most extraordinary! However, each house has its traditions, with which I would not for the world interfere. We have a prejudice in favor of washing. Go on, Beetle from 'jugurtha tamen' and, if you can, avoid the more flagrant forms of guessing." Prout's house was furious because Macrea's and Hartopp's houses joined King's to insult them.
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