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David smiled to himself as he thought of his own school—the Inverness Academy.

They had thought themselves very “genteel” with their school colours and their Latin song beginning:

Floreat Academia

Mater alma, mater pia.

And indeed this gentility had been rubbed into them every morning on their way to school by bare-footed laddies, who shouted after them:

“Gentry puppies, ye’re no verra wice,

Ye eat your parritch wi’ bugs an’ lice.”

“I doubt it wouldn’t seem very genteel to them,” he thought, without, however, a trace of bitterness.

They began to talk about the prospects of the Cambridge Boat, and Guy, who prided himself on being able to talk knowledgeably on such matters, eagerly joined in with aphorisms on “form.”

“I say, Munroe, we’re nowhere in this show, are we?” said Rory, with a friendly grin; then suddenly remembering that he had no legitimate cause for assuming that David was not a University man (Rory prided himself on his tact), he added hastily, “mere sodgers like you and me.”