CHAPTER XV.
THE READING-ROOM RIOT.
Thurston followed up his withdrawal from the football team by a number of other actions which clearly showed a determination to spend what was known to be his last term at Ronleigh in living at open enmity with those who had once been his friends and associates.

He never played unless it was in one of the rough-and-ready practice games, composed chiefly of stragglers, who, from being kept in and various other causes, were too late for the regular pick-ups, and came drifting on to the field later in the afternoon.

He severed his connection with the debating society, and shunning the society of his comrades in the Sixth, was seen more frequently than ever hobnobbing with Gull and Hawley, or lounging about in conversation with Noaks and Mouler.
Fletcher senior, a mean, double-faced fellow, continued, as the saying goes, "to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds." "It's an awful pity about old 'Thirsty,'" he would say to his brother prefects.

"I try to keep him a bit straight; but upon my word, if he will go on being so friendly with such cads as Gull and Noaks, I shall chuck him altogether." The speaker's methods of endeavouring to keep his chum straight were, to say the least of it, not very effective, and, if anything, rather more calculated to encourage him still further in his descent along the downward road.
"Look here!" said Fletcher, as they sat one evening talking in Thurston's study: "don't you think you'd better make peace with Allingford and the rest, and be a nice white sheep again, instead of a giddy old black one?
I can tell you at present they don't look upon you as being a particular credit to the Sixth." "I don't care what they think; they're a beastly set of prigs, and I'll have nothing more to do with them--with Allingford especially." "Well, of course," answered Fletcher, with an air of resignation, "the quarrel's yours and not mine.

I must own that I think Allingford made a great deal of unnecessary fuss over that Black Swan business, and acted very shabbily in making you send in your resignation just before the holidays.