"Three cheers for the doctor!"
"Three cheers for Miss Violet!"
"Three cheers for the governors!"
Then again, in regular order, the captain of each house stepped forward
and called for three cheers for his own house, all of which were
vigorously given--each house being on its mettle to drown all the
others.
Last in the list Ainger stepped forward and called for "Three cheers for
Railsford's!"
Then Arthur and Dig and the rest of the house got upon their chairs and
put their backs into the shout; and everyone allowed that, whatever else
Railsford's wasn't first in, it could carry off the palm for noise. At
the end of the third cheer a voice called out,--
"One more for the cock house!"
Whereat Arthur and Dig and the rest of them got on their chairs again
and yelled till the roof rang.
Then amid a multitude of promiscuous cheers for "the captain," "the
prefects," "the cook," "Jason," "the school cat," "Thucydides!" and
finally for "Dulce Domum!" Grandcourt broke up for the holidays.
Let you and me, friendly reader, say good-bye here amid all the cheery
bustle and excitement of the crowded quadrangle. It is better to part
so than to linger about talking morality till the great square is
empty--till the last of the cabs has rumbled away out of hearing--till
the echoes of our own voices come back and startle us from behind the
chapel buttresses. If we wait till then, we part sadly and miss the
promise of a meeting again. But if we part now, while Arthur, on the
box of his cab, with his "people" safely stowed inside, is whooping his
noisy farewells right and left--while Smedley, with his Balliol
scholarship in his pocket, is leaving Grandcourt for good, and casting
his last shy look up at the doctor's window--while Messrs. Roe, Grover,
and Railsford are talking cheerfully of their Highland trip in August--
while monsieur, humming _Partant pour la Syrie_, is hurrying away to his
own dear France and his still dearer little girls--while Ainger and
Barnworth, the old and the new captains of Railsford's, are grasping
hands at the door--if we part now, we part not as those who bid a long
farewell, but as those who think and talk of meeting again.