No one can recollect an occasion on which Master Percy has ever come home at the right time without being looked for.

If the appointed hour is four, every one feels well treated if his honour turns up at five.

Nor, with the exception of his mother, and now and then Raby, does any one dream of becoming agitated for three or four hours later.
When therefore, just as the family is sitting down to dinner at half- past six, Walker enters radiant to announce that Master Percy has come in, no one thinks any more about his prolonged absence, and one or two of the servants outside say to one another that the young master must be hungry to come home at this virtuous hour.
This surmise is probably correct, for Percy presents himself in a decidedly dishevelled condition, his flannel costume being liberally bespattered with mud, and his hair very much in need of a brush and comb.
You cannot help liking the boy despite the odd, self-willed solemnity of his face.

He is between fourteen and fifteen apparently, squarely built, with his mother's aquiline features and his father's strong forehead.

The year he has spent at Rugby has redeemed him from being a lout, but it is uncertain whether it has done anything more.