'Mine happens to be a First Eleven tie.'
'Oh! Well, as a matter of fact, you know, I was going to take off my tie. I always do, especially at night. It's a sort of habit I've got into.'
'Not quite so much of your beastly cheek, please,' said Gethryn.
'Right-ho!' said Farnie cheerfully, and silence, broken only by the shrieking of the cab wheels, brooded once more over the cab. Then Gethryn, feeling that perhaps it would be a shame to jump too severely on a new boy on his first day at a large public school, began to think of something conciliatory to say. 'Look here,' he said, 'you'll get on all right at Beckford, I expect. You'll find Leicester's a fairly decent sort of House. Anyhow, you needn't be afraid you'll get bullied. There's none of that sort of thing at School nowadays.'
'Really?'
'Yes, and there's another thing I ought to warn you about. Have you brought much money with you?'
''Bout fourteen pounds, I fancy,' said Farnie carelessly.
'Fourteen what!' said the amazed Bishop. 'Pounds!'
'Or sovereigns,' said Farnie. 'Each worth twenty shillings, you know.'
For a moment Gethryn's only feeling was one of unmixed envy. Previously he had considered himself passing rich on thirty shillings a term. He had heard legends, of course, of individuals who come to School bursting with bullion, but never before had he set eyes upon such an one. But after a time it began to dawn upon him that for a new boy at a public school, and especially at such a House as Leicester's had become under the rule of the late Reynolds and his predecessors, there might be such a thing as having too much money.
'How the deuce did you get all that?' he asked.
'My pater gave it me. He's absolutely cracked on the subject of pocket-money. Sometimes he doesn't give me a sou, and sometimes he'll give me whatever I ask for.'
'But you don't mean to say you had the cheek to ask for fourteen quid?'
'I asked for fifteen. Got it, too. I've
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