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Tod and Peter, whose mental attitude was always that “all is for the best in the best possible of worlds,” decided that after all propinquity has its advantages, and rejoiced that family tradition sent them into a house whose head was proverbially the “slackest old slackster in the whole school.” A dreamy, mild-mannered, gentlemanly man that master, who left the management of the “house” entirely to an extremely energetic wife and a “young brusher” (“brusher” is the familiar term for master in that school), whose prowess in the playing-fields was only equalled by his extreme fussiness where rules of his own making were concerned.

“Not a bad chap,” the twins decided after their first week; “but a bit like the German Emperor, you know—wants things all his own way. Still, if you humor the youth, he’s all right.”

So successfully did they humor the “young brusher” in question that for the first month all went smoothly, and the house-master himself, a gentle optimist, ever ready to believe the best of boy-humanity, really thought that the “character” that had preceded them from preparatory school was perhaps over-emphasized.