And Ponty, as he lay there blinking in the sun, moralised on the matter, and came to the conclusion that there is hope for a boy as long as he loves to don his flannels and roll up his shirt- sleeves, and stand up, with his head in the air, to face his rival like a man.

Even a Culver may look a gentleman as he rushes down to his corner and saves his match with a left-hander, and Aspinall himself may appear formidable when, as he stands up to serve, his foeman pulls his cap down and retreats with lengthened face across the service-line.
But where were Dick and Heathcote?
For a whole week Ponty took his siesta in the Juniors' corner, blinking now at the cricket, now at the tennis, strolling sometimes into the gymnasium, and sometimes to the fives courts, but nowhere did Basil the son of Richard meet his eyes, and nowhere was Heathcote the Pledgeling.
One day he did find the latter wandering like a ghost in the Quadrangle, and saw him bolt like a rat to his hole at sight of a monitor; and once he saw Dick striding at the head of a phalanx of Juniors, with his coat off and his face very much on one side, and the marks of battle on his eye and lip.

Ponty sheered off before the triumphal army reached him and shrugged his shoulders.
That afternoon he encountered our heroes arm-in-arm in the Quadrangle and hailed them.

They obeyed his summons uneasily.
"Go and put on your flannels, both of you," said the captain, "and come back here; I'll wait for you." In trepidation they obeyed and went, while Ponty looked about for a cozy seat on which to stretch himself.
In five minutes they returned and presented themselves.

Ponty eyed them both calmly, and then roused himself and began to walk to the fields.
Tennis was in full swing in the Junior corner, where all sorts of play, good, bad and indifferent, was going on at the nets.