If there was no captain, there was no one to give them a licking (for the worst an ordinary monitor could do was to give an imposition), and that being so, it would surely be a waste of precious opportunity if they failed to signalise the event by some little celebration.

And, as it happened, there was a little celebration which badly wanted celebrating, and for which only a chance like the present could have been considered favourable.

In other words, there was a rather long score which the juniors of Parrett's were anxious to settle up with the juniors of Welch's.

The debt was of long standing, having begun as far back as the middle of the Lent term, when the Welchers had played upon some of Parrett's with a hose from behind their own door, and culminating in the unprovoked outrage upon the luckless Parson on the river that very morning.
Now if there was one thing more than another the young Parretts prided themselves in, it was their punctuality in matters of business; and it had troubled them sorely that circumstances over which they had no control (in other words, the fear of Wyndham) should have prevented their settling scores with the Welchers at an earlier date.
Now, however, an opportunity was come, and, like all honest men, they determined at once to avail themselves of it.
So the reason why Bloomfield and Game could find no fags in Parrett's house to steer for them was because all the fags of Parrett's house, aided by Telson of the schoolhouse, were at that moment paying a business call at Welch's, and having on the whole rather a lively time of it.
The juniors of Welch's were, take them altogether, a rather more rowdy lot than the juniors of either of the two other houses, or, indeed, than those of both the other houses put together.

Somehow Welch's was always the rowdy house of Willoughby.