He, therefore, stood with his back to the wall and his arms folded, waiting till the storm should blow itself out.
Upstairs, in the studies, riot scarcely less exuberant was taking place.
Bosom friends, reunited after three weeks' separation, celebrated their reunion with paeans of jubilation and war-whoops of triumph.

"Cargoes" were being unladen here; Liddell-and-Scott was officiating as a cricket ball there; a siege was going on round this door, and a hand-to-hand scrimmage between the posts of that.

A few of the placid ones were quietly unpacking in the midst of the Babel, and one or two were actually writing home.
Our heroes, fancying the looks neither of the matron's hall nor of the lobby upstairs, deemed it prudent to retreat as quickly as possible to the junior schoolroom, there to await, in the calm atmosphere of expectant scholarship, the ringing of the twelve o'clock bell.
Has the reader ever visited that famous resort of youth, the Zoo?
Has he stood on that terrace five minutes before dinner-time and listened to the deep-mouthed growl of the lion, the barking of the wolf, the shriek of the hyaena, as they pace their cages and await their meal?
Then, turning on his heel, has he quitted that stately scene and pushed back the door of the monkey house?
Even so it was with our heroes.

The junior schoolroom was as the matron's hall and the studies thrown into one .-- At first, to the untutored eyes of the visitors, it looked like a surging sea of unkempt heads and waving elbows; then, as their vision grew accustomed to the scene, they beheld faces and legs and boots; then, amid the general din, they distinguished voices, and perceived that the sea was made up of human beings.
At the which they would fain have retreated; but, as old Virgil says-- and we won't insult our readers by translating the verses-- "Facilis descensus Averni, Sed revocare gradum Hoc opus, hic labor est." Their retreat was cut off before they were well in the room, and, amid loud cries of "New kids!" "Bertie!" "Scrunch!" they were escorted to the nearest form, where they forthwith received a most warm and pressing welcome into their new quarters.

The top boy of the form, in his emotion, planted his feet against the wall and began to push inwards.
The bottom boy, equally overcome, planted his feet in the hollow of a desk and also pushed inwards.