His hair was dark, straight, and undistinguished; and his face,
if one saw it after his figure, was something of a surprise.
For while the form might be called big and braggart, the face
might have been called weak, and was certainly worried. It was a
hesitating face, which seemed to blink doubtfully in the daylight.
He had even the look of one who has received a buffet that
he cannot return. In all occupations he was the average boy;
just sufficiently good at sports, just sufficiently bad at work
to be universally satisfactory. But he was prominent in nothing,
for prominence was to him a thing like bodily pain. He could not endure,
without discomfort amounting to desperation, that any boy should
be noticed or sensationally separated from the long line of boys;
for him, to be distinguished was to be disgraced.
Those who interpret schoolboys as merely wooden and barbarous,
unmoved by anything but a savage seriousness about tuck or cricket,
make the mistake of forgetting how much of the schoolboy life is
public and ceremonial, having reference to an ideal; or, if you like,
to an affectation. Boys, like dogs, have a sort of romantic
ritual which is not always their real selves. And this romantic
ritual is generally the ritual of not being romantic; the pretence
of being much more masculine and materialistic than they are.
Boys in themselves are very sentimental.
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