So that in the memory of the present "generation"-- a school generation being reckoned as five years--the Willoughby captain had always been cock of the school in every sense in which such a distinction was possible.
But now all of a sudden the school woke up to the fact that this delightful state of things was not everlasting.

Wyndham had left and his mantle had fallen from him in two pieces.
The new head classic was Riddell, a comparatively unknown boy in the school, who had come there a couple of years ago from a private school, and about whom the most that was known was that he was physically weak and timid, rarely taking part in any athletic exercises, having very few chums, interfering very little with anybody else, and reputed "pi."-- as the more irreverent among the Willoughbites were wont to stigmatise any fellow who made a profession of goodness.

Such was the boy on whom, according to strict rule, the captaincy of Willoughby would devolve, and it need hardly be said that the discovery spread consternation wherever it travelled.
Among the seniors the idea was hardly taken seriously.
"The doctor would never be so ridiculous," said Ashley to Coates, as they talked the matter over in the study of the former.

"We might as well shut up the school." "The worst of it is, I don't see how he can help it," replied Coates.
"Help it! Of course he can help it if he likes.

There's no written law that head classics are to be captains, if they can't hold a bat or run a hundred yards, is there ?" "I don't suppose there is.