But it was too risky an amusement to be popular.
His absence of mind, however, was his great enemy at school.

Of him the story was current that once in the Fourth, when summoned to the front to call-over the register, he called his own name among the rest, and receiving no reply, looked to his place, and seeing the desk vacant, marked Rollitt down as absent.

Another time, having gone to his room after morning school to change into his flannels for cricket, he had gone to bed by mistake, and slept soundly till call-bell next morning.
"Have you heard Rollitt's last ?" came to be the common way of prefacing any unlikely story at Fellsgarth; and what with fact and fiction, the hero had come to be quite a mythical celebrity at Fellsgarth.
His thrift was another of his characteristics.

He had never been seen to spend a penny, unless it was to save twopence.

If fellows had dared, they would have liked now and then to pay his subscriptions to the clubs; or even hand on an old pair of cricket shoes or part of the contents of a hamper for his benefit.