CHAPTER FIVE.
ARTHUR AND THE BARONET SETTLE DOWN FOR THE TERM.
The reader is not to imagine that Railsford's house contained nobody but the four prefects of the Sixth-form and the sedate tenants of the study immediately over the master's head, who belonged to the Shell.

On the contrary, the fifty boys who made up the little community were fully representative of all grades and classes of Grandcourt life.

There was a considerable substratum of "Babies" belonging to the junior forms, who herded together noisily and buzzed like midges in every hole and corner of the house.

Nor were Herapath and Oakshott, with their two cronies, by any means the sole representatives of that honourable fraternity known as the Shell, too mature for the junior school, and yet too juvenile for the upper forms.

A score at least of Railsford's subjects belonged to this noble army, and were ready to wage war with anybody or anything--for a consideration.
Still ascending in the scale, came a compact phalanx of Fifth-form heroes, counting some of the best athletes of the second eleven and fifteen, and yet not falling in with the spirited foreign policy so prevalent in the rest of the house.