The tea was not a success.

The school followed the plain lead of the eleven, and as Phil hurried
along to chapel the next day no one hooked in with him, as had been done
"the day before yesterday!" He was left severely alone.

In plain words, St Amory's School consigned Phil Bourne to Coventry.




CHAPTER VII

THANKS TO ACTON


After the Carthusian match there was but one topic, or to be strictly
accurate, perhaps, two topics of interest in the school--who would be
cock-house at footer and who would get the Perry Exhibition.

The rest of the houses knew that Biffen's house was not now the
unconsidered article it was once; that it wasn't the door-mat upon which
any one might wipe his feet before proceeding into the inner circles of
the housers' competition, and there was more than a little curiosity to
see how far the "resurrected" house would mount.

But not a single soul dreamt that it would reach the final. The whole
school gasped for a fortnight on end as Biffen's annihilated Dover's,
Hargen's, Sharpe's, and Merishall's _seriatim_, and at last faced