But any stick is good enough to beat a dog with, and when Mr Bickers's boys had a mind to "go for" Moss's boys, they espoused the cause of Bickers, and when Mr Moss's boys went out to battle against those of Bickers's house, their war-cry was "Moss." Much legend had grown up round the feud; but if anyone had had patience to examine it to the bottom he would probably have found the long and short to be that Mr Bickers, being unhappily endowed with a fussy disposition and a sour and vindictive temper, had incurred the displeasure of the boys of his rival's house, and not being the man to smooth away a bad impression, had aggravated it by resenting keenly what he considered to be an unjust prejudice against himself.
This little digression may enable the reader, if he has had the patience to wade through it, to form an idea of the state of parties in that particular section of Grandcourt which chiefly came under Railsford's observation.

With Roe's and Grover's houses on the other side of the big square, his boys had comparatively little to do as a house, while with the remote communities in the little square they had still less in common.
But to return to our story.

The first week of the next term was one of the busiest Mark Railsford ever spent.

His duties in the Shell began on the second day, and the opening performance was not calculated to elate his spirit.

The sixty or seventy prodigies of learning who assembled there came from all houses.