Soon, however, a noise of striving urchins arose, and muttered encouragements from the neighbouring boys of "Go it, Tadpole!" "Now, young Green!" "Haul away his blanket!" "Slipper him on the hands!" Young Green and little Hall, commonly called Tadpole, from his great black head and thin legs, slept side by side far away by the door, and were for ever playing one another tricks, which usually ended, as on this morning, in open and violent collision; and now, unmindful of all order and authority, there they were, each hauling away at the other's bedclothes with one hand, and with the other, armed with a slipper, belabouring whatever portion of the body of his adversary came within reach.
"Hold that noise up in the corner," called out the prepostor, sitting up and looking round his curtains; and the Tadpole and young Green sank down into their disordered beds; and then, looking at his watch, added, "Hullo! past eight.

Whose turn for hot water ?" (Where the prepostor was particular in his ablutions, the fags in his room had to descend in turn to the kitchen, and beg or steal hot water for him; and often the custom extended farther, and two boys went down every morning to get a supply for the whole room.) "East's and Tadpole's," answered the senior fag, who kept the rota.
"I can't go," said East; "I'm dead lame." "Well, be quick some of you, that's all," said the great man, as he turned out of bed, and putting on his slippers, went out into the great passage, which runs the whole length of the bedrooms, to get his Sunday habiliments out of his portmanteau.
"Let me go for you," said Tom to East; "I should like it." "Well, thank 'ee, that's a good fellow.

Just pull on your trousers, and take your jug and mine.

Tadpole will show you the way." And so Tom and the Tadpole, in nightshirts and trousers, started off downstairs, and through "Thos's hole," as the little buttery, where candles and beer and bread and cheese were served out at night, was called, across the School-house court, down a long passage, and into the kitchen; where, after some parley with the stalwart, handsome cook, who declared that she had filled a dozen jugs already, they got their hot water, and returned with all speed and great caution.

As it was, they narrowly escaped capture by some privateers from the fifth-form rooms, who were on the lookout for the hot-water convoys, and pursued them up to the very door of their room, making them spill half their load in the passage.
"Better than going down again though," as Tadpole remarked, "as we should have had to do if those beggars had caught us." By the time that the calling-over bell rang, Tom and his new comrades were all down, dressed in their best clothes, and he had the satisfaction of answering "here" to his name for the first time, the prepostor of the week having put it in at the bottom of his list.