Character Analysis
These are a group of boys that Neville, Louis, Bernard, and Percival attend boarding school with. They're rich, athletic, and popular. Think Mean Girls, but with a group of English lads. On Wednesdays they probably wear pink.
They play cricket with Percival, which is certainly enough to spark Neville's jealousy. Louis, too, appears to envy them while also hating their privilege and jerkiness, saying:
They are the volunteers; they are the cricketers; they are the officers of the Natural History Society. They are always forming into fours and marching in troops with badges on their caps; they salute simultaneously passing the figure of their general. How majestic is their order, how beautiful is their obedience! If I could follow, if I could be with them, I would sacrifice all I know. But they also leave butterflies trembling with their wings pinched off; they throw dirty pocket-handkerchiefs clotted with blood screwed up into corners. They make little boys sob in dark passages. They have big red ears that stand out under their caps. Yet that is what we wish to be, Neville and I. I watch them go with envy. Peeping from behind a curtain, I note the simultaneity of their movements with delight. If my legs were reinforced by theirs, how they would run! If I had been with them and won matches and rowed in great races, and galloped all day, how I should thunder out songs at midnight! In what a torrent the words would rush from my throat! (2b.29)