CHAPTER IV

I

On Christmas eve John had noticed another guest at dinner, but he had no opportunity of studying the person, who was addressed as Mr. Steer. The next morning after breakfast, there was a walking party to Holdfast Covert, about three miles, whence a fine view of the surrounding country was obtainable. John asked Vernley all about the stranger, for he was attracted to him by his manner.

"The Governor's frightfully keen on Steer," said Vernley. "He's a poet and quite well-known--at least I think so. There's always a mild sensation in the district when Steer's down here."

"Have you read his books?"

"No, I've seen them of course--they're always prominent in the drawing-room when he comes here. He's not like most of those writing people who everlastingly talk about themselves, and he's a sportsman. He'll start love-thirty with any one on the tennis court and beat 'em."

It was on the way back from the covert that John had his first conversation with Steer. The boy had fallen behind to tie up a shoe lace, and the poet was hacking away at a wand he had cut out of the thicket.

"What are you making, sir?" asked John, overtaking him.

"A whistle--can you make one?"

"No--I'm not very handy with a pocket knife."

"Well, there you are--that's a sycamore pipe which you can play--like the Idle Shepherd Boys," said Steer, giving the stick to John.

"_On pipes of sycamore they play The fragments of a Christmas hymn,--_

I suppose you know that?"

John confessed his ignorance, but he liked the sound of it and wanted to hear more.

"God bless me," said Steer, "you mean to say that you've not heard of Wordsworth? I thought every boy out of a nursery had been brought up on 'We are Seven' and 'The Idle Shepherd Boys.'"

"I've never heard of Mr. Wordsworth," said John naïvely,--"do tell me about him."

"Oh, he's quite dead now--he was what is called a Lake poet--he lived at the English Lakes, Grasmere and Rydal to be precise, where there was a group of these poets and essayists--Coleridge, Southey, De Quincey, Christopher North--names you've probably heard. 'The Idle Shepherd Boys' was a favourite poem when I was a lad. I remember reciting it to my mother for a penny. She used to give me a penny for every new poem I learned. I remember how she laughed when I pronounced 'vapours'--'vappers.' The first stanza runs--

_The valley rings with mirth and joy; Among the hills the echoes play A never, never ending song, To welcome in the May. The magpie chatters with delight; The mountain raven's youngling brood Have left the mother and the nest; And they go rambling east and west In search of their own food; Or through the glittering vapours dart In very wantonness of heart._"

"Oh, how jolly! Do go on please!" shouted John eagerly, and his new friend recited the whole poem. The joy on the boy's face greatly amused him.

"You've evidently got a taste for verse, John--but there's much better stuff than that. Wordsworth was a philosopher, he wrote splendid things like--

_Love had he known in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills._"

These words fell upon John's ears as music. It was a spell upon him, something that took him into a realm of wonderful sounds and visions. On that walk home, he plied the poet with questions, and Keats, Shelley, Browning and Byron became more than mere names. He learned how they had lived, of Byron's picturesque, turbulent career; of Shelley's passion for reform; of Keats' struggle against disease and the burning ardour for the glory that was Greece. And then Steer told him of living men who were writing. "But don't meet them if you can help," he advised. "You should never meet authors of the books you admire--they have conserved their best moments in a few pages, and they cannot live up to your expectations--and authors, too, are not the pleasantest of mankind. There is sufficient egotism in a room full of them to lift St. Paul's to the top of Everest."

"But you're a poet yourself, Mr. Steer--and you're not at all objectionable!" said John laughingly.

"Perhaps that's why I'm such a bad one," answered Steer. They had now overtaken the others and Vernley, looking round, noticed John's excited manner.

"Whatever's stirred you up, Scissors?" he asked. "You look as if you'd found a gold mine!"

"Mr. Steer's been telling me about the poets. Oh, Verney, I'd no idea they were such a ripping set. Have you got a Wordsworth at home?"

"Yes--but you haven't come here to read that stuff--you'll have to read it when you get at your 'remove'--a horrible old man, always grousing about some 'divine, far-off event'--no, that's Tennyson. How does it run? I've got it--

_a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns And the round ocean and the living air--_"

"That's beautiful, it's--" exclaimed John.

"I call it utter tosh. Parse and analyse. Subject; there isn't one, predicate; find it if you can; object--Good Lord, why don't these fellows write sense? Whoever saw a round ocean?"

"But that isn't what he meant--you mustn't take it pictorially."

"Bravo, John, you've got the sense of it," interjected Steer. "Bobbie's attempted to analyse it,--that's fatal."

Vernley stared at John curiously for a moment, amazed at his friend's enthusiasm, then--

"You are a rum beggar, Scissors; I believe you'd like to write stuff like that yourself."

"Perhaps he will--alas," sighed Steer.

"Why do you say 'alas'?" asked John. "You're not at all sad, you're quite jolly and--"

"You can play tennis, sir," added Vernley in a consolatory voice.

II

For the remainder of the day, John's head was full of poetry. He had found a copy of Wordsworth in the library, and after lunch, when every one disappeared for a nap, he stole up to his bedroom, successfully evading Vernley, who, he knew, would cover him with derision if detected. Fortunately Vernley had gone across to the vicarage with a message, and he was detained there with lemonade and mince pies for a whole hour. In that time John read through "The Idle Shepherd Boys" and "Lucy Gray." He then attempted "The Excursion" and found it altogether too much for him, save one jolly bit--

"_He loved; from a swarm of rosy boys Singled me out, as he in sport would say, For my grave looks, too thoughtful for my years,_"

which ministered to his egotism, and helped him to build up visions of long walks with Mr. Steer, in which he saw down into the soul of a poet. He had given up "The Excursion" in despair, but later, turning over the pages, he recognised the lines Vernley had quoted. Like an old friend they seemed. He had just finished the "Lines composed about Tintern Abbey," when Vernley, or Bobbie as the household called him, burst in, searching for him.

"Scissors, I've been all over the house--what are you doing?"

"Reading." John closed the book and half hid it behind him, but Vernley was too sharp and made a grab. One look, and the secret was out.

"Scissors! I've a good mind to scrag you."

"If you can--but isn't it ripping--

_Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air--_

--it's like eating caramels."

"If you say it again, I will scrag you!"

"_Whose dwelling is the light--_" began John provocatively.

Vernley leapt upon him and they went down together, John underneath.

"Say it again, Scissors!" cried Vernley, holding John's head firmly to the floor. John wriggled and tried to shift the hand over his mouth.

"Whose dwelling is the--" he managed to get out before he was choked. There was a wild scrimmage which ended with a great crash. They had cannoned into the washstand, and the jug and basin lay in a thousand fragments.

"Golly!--what a mess!" commented Vernley from where he lay, surveying the ruins.

"Will your mater be angry?" asked John nervously.

"No--she's used to having things smashed--it's a family failing. I've made a mess of your collar, you'll have to put a clean one on. Old Crimp's coming to tea, I've just been to the vicarage. He's a dreadful old bore--but he's got a ripping kid. I can't think how he did it."

"Did what?" asked John naïvely.

Vernley looked a him for a moment, and then went scarlet. "Scissors," he said, taking his arm, "you are a bit of an angel--"

"_Whose dwelling--_" began John derisively.

"Shut up!--do you want to smash the looking glass next? Get your collar on--there's the gong for tea."

Those days at "The Croft" went all too swiftly, and the morning came when the two boys lifted their trunks into the car and were whirled down the drive to the station. John left feeling that the end of life had come. He had been among friends and had felt almost as if he had been to his own home--the kind of home of which he had dreamed. Mrs. Vernley had mothered him, and John's secret pleasure at being petted had been expressed in many little acts of devotion.

"What a lovable boy he is!" she said to her husband as she watched the car recede down the drive.

"Yes, and sharp too. They may well call him 'Scissors'--that boy will cut his way through," replied Mr. Vernley. "Where's Muriel? I thought she was going to the station with them?"

Mrs. Vernley looked intently at her husband, but his face told her nothing. Ten minutes before she had hurried a sobbing Muriel off to her bedroom, where she was now going to lecture her on the absurdity of falling in love at sixteen, but as she secretly sympathised with her daughter she did not say anything to her husband. Upstairs in the bedroom she found Muriel with watery eyes, standing by the window, and screwing up a miniature handkerchief. Mrs. Vernley looked at her and decided that further words would bring a deluge. So she talked about everything but the thing in both their minds, and the only allusion to John's departure was when she said,

"Now, Muriel, wash your face. Miss Lane will be here for the music lesson in a few minutes."

It was then that Muriel found courage to make her confession.

"I gave him a photograph, Mother--I hope you don't mind?"

"Well, it's a little immodest for you to be presenting your photograph so freely."

"He asked me for it, Mother."

"Oh,--but really, you children are very absurd! I shall dread Bobbie bringing friends home with him if it means you are going to have red eyes every time. But there--you'll get over it," she said kindly, as she stooped and kissed her. "Now come along, dear, I'm afraid you haven't done much practising for Miss Lane."

The subject was never alluded to again, but Mr. Vernley the following morning almost provoked another flood of tears.

"You'll miss John, Muriel," he said genially at breakfast. "No more morning gallops together--you looked quite a loving pair on horseback." There was silence, then looking from Muriel to her mother, a glance told him everything.

"Why, bless me!--you don't mean to tell me--"

Muriel had dropped her eggspoon in a desperate search for a handkerchief. "My dear child!" cried Mr. Vernley, pinching her ear, "I'd no idea young Master Scissors had made such a conquest. The young beggar, I'll teach him to upset my daughter." He laughed good-heartedly, saw Muriel force a smile through her tears, and then diplomatically prevented further observation by spreading out the _Times_.

III

The two boys in the train were very silent. Vernley immersed in a copy of "The Hill." John sat staring out of the window. But it was not the swiftly passing fields that engaged his attention, for at that moment he was exercising what Mr. Steer, in the explanation of Wordsworth's poem, had called "the inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude." John's thoughts were not at all blissful. He was feeling quite blue. The end of a glorious holiday had come, and having what another poet had called "the passion of the past," he was reluctantly taking stock of his memories. He had found delightful friends. There were Mr. and Mrs. Vernley; he could never feel quite lonely in England now. They represented home for John, being people who could understand and sympathise. There was Mr. Chadburn who had talked to him quite seriously. John had found a great friend in Mr. Steer. They had had wonderful walks together, when John had been taken into a new world that awaited his discovery. Steer had invited him to call at his house when he was in London. He wondered whether Mrs. Steer would be just as delightful.

Then his thoughts turned to Muriel. She would be having her music lesson from Miss Lane now. He had made her tell him all she was going to do that day. After the music lesson she was going to visit the stables. He saw her walking round the wing of the house, he saw her small hand press the catch on the wicket gate, and her short graceful steps as she crossed the cobbled stable-yard to the corner where the horses were stabled. He knew exactly how she would lift the iron bar out of its socket, swing back the half-door, call "Bess!" and then stroke the white patch running from between the eyes down to the nose. He could even smell the stable, with that delightful manure and horsey aroma.

He could see the deftness with which she slipped the bridle over Bess's head, and the firm way in which she led her out of the stable, for she insisted on attending to Bess herself, and with a sharp movement she would be in the saddle at his side, level with and laughing into his face, and their horses would walk clattering across the cobbles, before breaking into a canter in the lane. He knew every inch of that lane, just where the horses would gallop, and where they would walk. He remembered the crest of the hill, with its pattern below of fields and farmhouses and stacks; with the dim blue clumps of leafless trees, and the barren telegraph poles, carrying the singing wires across the valley towards the railway siding. Half a mile over that crest was the copse where the robin sang as he kissed her that wonderful morning when they had ridden ahead of the others.

And now he was being carried away from all that happiness! He was going back to bare noisy rooms, to a crowd of boys and worried masters. Would such times as he had had ever come again? His hand at that moment rested on something hard in his pocket. It was Muriel's photograph which she had given him before breakfast. He had looked at it hurriedly then, in its tissue cover. Now he wanted to take it out and feast his eyes upon it. He looked up; Vernley was chewing butterscotch and still immersed in his book. He did not want the old lady sitting near to see him gazing at the photograph, so he got up and went into the adjoining lavatory. There he bolted the door and pulled out the precious packet.

Slipping the photograph from its paper cover, he saw it was a small cabinet in sepia by Neame, New Bond Street, of Muriel in her riding coat and cap. As he pulled it out something dropped to the floor. It was a small piece of tissue paper. He was disappointed, for he thought it was a note. Then seeing its shape, he knew it contained something, which, after unwrapping, proved to be a strand of hair. John immediately kissed it with all the sentiment of fifteen. He was about to wrap it up again, when he had an inspiration. It was another pledge of love and should be placed with Ali's gift. John pulled out the chain with its moonstone pendant, which he faithfully wore, and tied the strand of hair around the link. Then, putting the photograph back into his pocket, he returned to the carriage.

The platform was crowded when they arrived at Sedley and there was a fierce fight for seats in the brake. John found himself separated from Vernley, but half an hour later, as he was going towards Mrs. Fletcher's room, he was caught by the arm.

"I say, Scissors, what do you think?" asked Vernley excitedly. "We've got a new study! Maitland told me, and I didn't believe him, but it's on the list. There's another fellow in with us--what a nuisance! I don't know who he is."

"What's his name?"

"Marsh--Maitland says he's a new kid, tons of money and a motor bike. He was at Eton and has come here for some reason. It looks queer--we don't want Eton's cast-offs."

"I beg your pardon," said a quiet voice. The boys turned to find themselves surveyed by a calm young gentleman. He smiled at them in a superior way.

"My name is Marsh--of whom you speak. If my presence is offensive to your secluded domain, I'll remove myself."

"Pompous ass," thought John. Vernley stared at him.

"Well, we are friends y' see," said Vernley at last.

"So I perceive," murmured the tall youth, looking at Vernley, who had his arm in John's. There might have been something offensive in the fact, and the stranger impressed this upon them. Vernley drew his arm away.

"Do you always _perceive_ things?" asked John sarcastically.

"When they are worth it," retorted Marsh. "When I've finished unpacking, I'll speak to you again. So long," and he turned and walked down the corridor, with deliberate dignity.

"Well I'm snubbed," said Vernley. "Does Fletcher think we'll put up with that piece of skin and grief!"

"He'll speak to us again!--when he has finished unpacking! Bobbie, we are dismissed!" cried John.

Their next encounter with Marsh was more genial. They found him sitting in the new study. When John and Vernley opened the door they stood on the threshold and gasped. It was an amazing spectacle they beheld. Two lounge chairs covered with chintz were placed on each side of the fireplace. A blue cloth covered the table on which lay a shallow black bowl. In the bowl was water on which floated, in careless design, a dozen narcissi dropped in by the hand of Marsh. The window was draped in chintz and in the far recess was a magnificent bookcase. It towered up to the ceiling and was crammed with sumptuous books in highly-coloured leather bindings. There were four pictures on the walls, of a mysterious nature; those sallow-faced maidens and thin-legged youths in red hose, John learned later, were from the hand of Botticelli. A lady with a curious smirk occupied the place of honour over the fireplace. When John asked Marsh if it was his mother, the boy exclaimed sadly, "Alas, no!" and going to the bookshelf read from a volume a long analysis of the lady's smile written by a person called Pater in prose which, to John, seemed a long time getting to the point.

After the reading was finished and Marsh had pronounced it to be "luscious," he invited them to sit down, which was singular, since it was their study,--but he was a person who evidently took command. Appreciating comfort, and a little proud of the envy their study would arouse in others, they settled down amicably.

At the end of the month, they were inseparable. The trio became famous. Vernley was the athlete, Marsh the scholar, and John--that amazing discovery was made by John almost by accident. It filled his dreams for a whole term.

It was in the school debating society that John made his great discovery. Mr. Fletcher was in the chair. The meeting was in the lecture theatre with its tiers of seats climbing up to the back windows, in one of which John sat listening. There was a mock government in office, trying to introduce a bill for compulsory military training. The debate was opened by the captain of the Officers' Training Corps, a man John disliked intensely, mainly because he had prominent teeth that were not prolonged on parallel lines. John had attended three meetings of the society, but had not spoken. The small boys sat silent in the presence of the sixth form gods. John would not have spoken on this occasion except for an accident. He was sitting on the window seat, jammed in between two other boys, who, in the course of an attack upon each other's head, ejected John from his position. He fell with an amazing noise on the hollow boarding, and the Speaker, looking up, caught John's eye. The boy had no intention of speaking but Mr. Fletcher evidently misconstrued his action, and very kindly paused to give John his opportunity. So there was nothing else for him to do but to open his mouth. He stammered for half a minute, uttered a witticism and provoked a laugh, which encouraged him to proceed to a superb piece of youthful cynicism. The house gasped, but liked the sensation; the leader of the debate sat amazed at the junior's audacity.

But John had tasted blood. He felt the flattery of the attention he was commanding. He grew bolder. A few of Marsh's grandiloquent phrases came into his head, odd readings from those leather-bound books pointed his arguments gracefully, his ear for a choice phrase kept his listeners intent. At the end of ten minutes John sat down abruptly. There was a great silence. He had made a fool of himself, he thought, and was blushing with shame when the tide of applause caught him. It seemed to rock the theatre. He was being applauded, the whole theatre was applauding him! He was no longer a nonentity, but somebody! It dazed him a little. For the next half hour he heard his name mentioned in the debate. When they all trooped out of the theatre, he was smiled at, and patted on the back. The crowning moment came when Mr. Fletcher looked at him closely through his spectacles and said--

"I hardly like to approve of your audacity, Dean, but I am pleased that my house has such an eloquent representative. I'm afraid the bitterness of your spirit suggests a misspent youth and the convictions of a Labour leader." And with a good-natured smile, in which John detected whole-hearted approval, Fletcher passed on.

A fortnight later, John was the leader of the Opposition. It was an unheard-of thing for a junior boy to sit on the front bench, but John had broken all traditions. He was aided by Marsh who loved to be diplomatic. Marsh carried on an insidious campaign against all who opposed John's nomination. He held tea-parties at which he collected his forces. He despatched his lieutenants to the fields, the five courts, the common room, the quadrangles, the armoury and the tuck shop. Vernley brought round the athletic vote--"the blockhead squirearchy," Marsh called it, and the fifth and sixth form 'bloods' were bribed by the thoughtful loan of French novels.

"Scissors," announced March on the momentous day of the election, "you should be eternally grateful to the French scribes. Anatole France, Flaubert, Maupassant and Daudet--these have won the day. Thanks to the lasciviousness of Madame Bovary and the voluptuousness of Sappho, the full-blooded gods of Upper School will nod in your favour. I have seduced them with questionable literature. I have undermined their morals and pandered to their secret viciousness. In grateful recollection of the delicious nights I have given them, they are your henchmen to-day. I have suffered in the cause. This morning, the Censor, in the heavy shape of Fletcher, produced his warrant and searched my shelves. His disgusting taste has been satiated. Look--'A Rebours,' 'Thaïs' and 'Sappho' have been abducted. Those bleeding gaps are the memorials of my enthusiasm in the cause. In your hours of triumph, O Scissors, forget not the hand that raised you to your dizzy eminence. Let me whisper in your ear, and remind you, as the Cæsars of old, of the fickleness of Fate."

"Shut up, you ass," exclaimed Vernley. "Scissors'll romp in. I've exhausted the bank in buns and lemonade, and have given away enough cigarettes to smoke the enemy out."

"We shall probably be unseated for corruption," said John. "Your support, Marsh, is a questionable advantage."

"That's the kind of rotten remark one expects from a politician. You've a great political career in front of you, Scissors--you have the necessary lack of gratitude and want of principle. Et tu, Brute! O shades of the departed! Bovary, Thaïs and Sappho, behold the ingratitude of this friend who wades to glory over your dead bodies! Scissors, the first day you're in power you've got to abolish the censorship. There shall be no peace in your Parliament until I can read Wilde and Baudelaire in bed, without interruption or confiscation."

IV

As anticipated, Scissors headed the poll, and henceforth he was leader of the Opposition. The result was a high political fever. Immediately after breakfast each morning, he rushed round to the library and read through the newspapers. At first he modelled himself upon Winston Churchill, to whom he was supposed to have some facial likeness, but he found he had not the cool self-assumption of his prototype. He found himself more akin to Lloyd George, that Welsh lawyer whose name was as blasphemy to some and holy song to others. The role suited John. He was a born iconoclast. He had the Welshman's gift of stinging epithet, and he surprised himself with the veneer of venom that added lustre to his sentences. He learnt from his prototype the art of swift descent from Parnassus to Limehouse; he punctuated his periods with cheers provoked from the blubber-headed section of his audience; he knew the pathetic touch, the 'lump-in-the-throat' moment, as he called it, and he used them until his opponents were powerless to stem the avalanche of his invective.

All this alarmed Mr. Fletcher. He saw his house becoming socialistic. The authority of the prefects was becoming undermined, the junior boys no longer feared the Upper Remove. They frankly stated their dislikes. In one debate they declared their hatred of compulsory cricket with such vehemence that he had to move the closure, whereupon John attacked him as a champion of tyranny, the feeble upholder of bloated tradition. This so alarmed Fletcher that he had a private interview with John, who suggested very skilfully that his overture was a form of corruption. The fact was that John was getting a swollen head. Marsh, whose hornet-like nature delighted in the stinging of authority, encouraged John in his most daring attacks. Vernley, lost in admiration at John's brilliance, worshipped silently and approved without question. The other boys followed in John's path, hardly realising the power of his leadership.

The awakening came rapidly from an unseen quarter. It fell like a thundercloud over the sunshine of John's triumph, and he resented his defeat all the more because it was the hand of a friend who brought him low, and his fall had no dignity. It was not intellectual. He would have borne that. It was physical, and he felt sick with shame. Inwardly he was conscious that he had provoked disaster, and most of his anger fell upon himself for being such a fool and not realising the need of tact.

It happened one Wednesday half, towards the end of term. Lindon was the instrument of Fate. John was fagging that day and had been told to lay tea at four in Lindon's study. He had always been allowed great liberty by his fagmaster and he took his own time to perform his duties. John did not worry, therefore, when four o'clock struck as he finished a game in the fives' courts. He leisurely walked across to the bathroom, stripped and sat on the side of the bath, whistling while the water ran in. As he waited for the bath to fill, Marsh appeared through the steam.

"London's been calling like blazes for you. He said he told you to lay tea at four."

"Let him call," said John, turning on the cold tap and hiding himself in steam.

"You'd better hurry up, Scissors--he's quite scrubby."

John merely yelled as he plunged his leg into the hot water. He had just nicely soaped himself from head to foot, and was working up a white lather on his head, when he heard his name called, and looking up saw London.

"I asked you for tea at four," he said.

John's face was covered with white soap, but he smiled sweetly.

"I know, I'm coming when I've finished here."

"Indeed!--get out!"

"I say, Lindon, do be reasonable!"

"I have been--too much so. Are you going to get out?"

"No!" answered John, sullenly, rubbing his head.

"Very well!" A moment later the door slammed. John lay back in the bath. He had won. The warm water made him feel very comfortable. He wondered if Lindon felt sick. While he was contemplating, Lindon reappeared. He had a switch in his hand. The business took on a serious aspect.

"Are you coming out?" he asked severely.

John pouted. "No!" he said obstinately.

Lindon immediately pulled out the plug and turned on the cold water tap. John sat still, getting colder every second. Soon he was shivering. At last he had to stand up, and the moment he did so, Lindon's switch whistled through the air and left a red weal across John's thigh. Involuntarily he yelled, then blazing with shame and anger, he picked up the wet sponge and flung it full in Lindon's face. The squelch ruined the prefect's neat collar and tie, but Lindon only looked cooler, which frightened John. The next moment he was lifted bodily out of the bath, and before he recovered from his amazement at Lindon's strength, he was pinned head downwards over the drying rack and being thrashed like a puppy. He screamed at the top of his voice, not in pain but in anger. When he was released, he saw three boys waiting in the doorway with towels. They had seen all, and overcome with wounded vanity and misery, John fell in a heap on the floor and cried. He lay there, moaning, and Lindon as he watched him, relented.

"Scissors," he said kindly, bending down.

John looked at the face, and hated its strength. Madly, he struck Lindon full in the face with all his might. The boys in the door stood breathless at this act, watching. The elder boy was the most amazed of all. For a moment he stared at John, with an angry red mark under his right eye. Suddenly turning, he strode out of the room.

Utterly miserable and smarting, John dressed himself. He had acted like a little cad and Lindon would be quite just in refusing to accept his apology. He was miserable, not because he feared the consequences of this act, serious as they were, but he had lowered himself in the eyes of one whom he admired. Nothing could hurt him so much as that Lindon should hold him in contempt. He hurried along to the study, tapped and entered. Lindon sat in a wicker chair with his back to John, talking to three other fellows. They had finished tea. John hesitated, he had expected to find him alone, and his courage failed.

"I came to lay tea," he said feebly.

"We've had it," replied Lindon without turning his head. John paused awkwardly; there seemed no more to say so he went out of the room quietly. All the evening he hung about miserably. Marsh tried to cheer him up with witticisms about his being honoured with the disorder of the bath. Vernley quite bluntly told him that he had acted like a cad, which John knew very well. So he quarrelled with them both, and was glad when it was bed time. But in bed he could not sleep. He longed for the morning and the opportunity of apologising. Finally he buried his head under the sheets, and in sheer wretchedness cried himself to sleep.

The next morning, immediately after prayers, he went round to Lindon's study. There was no one there, so he sat down and waited. After ten minutes, as the bell rang for morning school, Staveley looked in for a book he had lent.

"Hullo!" he said.

"Do you know where Lindon is?" asked John.

"Yes--in the 'San.' He won't be here again I expect this term. He's suspect--chicken pox. Seven of Field House are down. You'd better cut, that's second bell."

When the end of term came, a fortnight later, Lindon had not reappeared. John went across to the Sanitorium and learned that he was convalescent, but could not be seen. Yet he knew Staveley had visited him. It was obvious he did not wish to see John. So ended a wretched term.