When they'd had time enough to clean them three times over, I went out to look after them.

They weren't in the passages so down I went into the hall, where I heard music; and there I found them sitting on the table, listening to Johnson, who was playing the flute, and my candlesticks stuck between the bars well into the fire, red-hot, clean spoiled.
They've never stood straight since, and I must get some more.

However, I gave them a good licking; that's one comfort." Such were the sort of scrapes they were always getting into; and so, partly by their own faults, partly from circumstances, partly from the faults of others, they found themselves outlaws, ticket-of-leave men, or what you will in that line--in short, dangerous parties--and lived the sort of hand-to-mouth, wild, reckless life which such parties generally have to put up with.

Nevertheless they never quite lost favour with young Brooke, who was now the cock of the house, and just getting into the sixth; and Diggs stuck to them like a man, and gave them store of good advice, by which they never in the least profited.
And even after the house mended, and law and order had been restored, which soon happened after young Brooke and Diggs got into the sixth, they couldn't easily or at once return into the paths of steadiness, and many of the old, wild, out-of-bounds habits stuck to them as firmly as ever.

While they had been quite little boys, the scrapes they got into in the School hadn't much mattered to any one; but now they were in the upper school, all wrong-doers from which were sent up straight to the Doctor at once.