him with a giggle.
It was a blow, admittedly a blow. He had not imagined himself a shining success, but he had not thought that he was giving himself away quite as badly as that. They got on a great deal better though after it. They knew where they were, and he found her a very jolly girl, a simple creature, whose one idea was to be admired and to enjoy herself, an ambition not so very different from Roland’s. It was her sense of humor that beat him: she giggled most of the time; why he could not understand. It was annoying, because everyone stared at them, and Roland hated to be conspicuous. He was prepared to enjoy the illusion but not the reality in public. He was not therefore very sorry when the Abbey clock warned him that in a few minutes the four-eighteen would have arrived and that the best place for him was the School house dining room.
On the way back he met Howard.
“I say, you rather let me in for it, you know,” he said.
“Oh, rot, my dear chap; but even if I did, I’ll bet you enjoyed yourself all right.”
“Perhaps I did. But that makes no difference. After all, you didn’t know I was going to. I’d never seen the girl before.”
“But one never has on these occasions, has one? One’s got to trust to luck; you know that as well as I do.”
“Of course, of course, but still. …”
They argued it out till they reached the cloisters leading to the School house studies, exchanged there a cheery good-night and went their way. Five minutes later the four-eighteen was in; the study passages were filled with shouts; Roland was running up and down stairs, greeting his old friends. The incident was closed, and in the normal course of things it would never have been reopened.
That it was reopened was due entirely, if indirectly, to Roland’s laziness on a wet Sunday afternoon, halfway through October. It was a really wet afternoon, the sort of afternoon when there is nothing to be done but to pack one’s study full of really good chaps and get up a decent fug. Any small boy can be persuaded, with the aid of a shilling, to brew some tea, and there are few things better than to sit in the window-seat and watch the gravel courts turn to an enormous lake. Roland was peculiarly aware of the charm of an afternoon so spent as he walked across to his study after lunch, disquieted by the knowledge that his football boots wanted restudding and that the night before he had vowed solemnly that he would take them down to the professional before tea. It would be fatal to leave them any longer, and he knew it. The ground on Saturday had been too wet for football, and the whole house had gone for a run, during which Roland had worn down one of his studs on the hard roads, and driven a nail that uncomfortable hundredth of an inch through the sole of his boot. If he wore those boots again before they had been mended that hundredth of an inch would become a tenth of an inch, and make no small part of a crater in his foot. It was obviously up to him to put on a mackintosh and go down to the field at once. There was no room for argument, and Roland knew it, but. …
It was very pleasant and warm inside the study and damnably unpleasant anywhere else. If only he were a prefect, and had a fag, how simple his life would become. His shoes would be cleaned for him, his shaving water would be boiled in the morning, his books would be carried down to his classroom, and on this rain-drenched afternoon he would only have to put his head outside the study door and yell “Fag!” and it would be settled. But he was not a prefect, and he had no fag. It was no use growling about it. He would have to go, of course he would have to go, then added as a corollary—yes, certainly, at three o’clock. By that time the weather might have cleared up.
But it had not cleared up by three o’clock, and Roland had become hopelessly intrigued by a novel by Wilkie Collins, called The Moonstone. He had just reached the place where Sergeant Cuff looks up at Rachel’s window and whistles The Last Rose of Summer. He could not desert Sergeant Cuff at such a point for a pair of football boots, and at three o’clock, with the whole afternoon before him. At half-past there would be tons of time. But by half-past three it was raining in the true Fernhurst manner, fierce, driving rain that whipped across the courts, heavy gusts of wind that shrieked down the cloisters. Impossible weather, absolutely impossible weather. No one but a fool would go out in it. He would wait till four, it was certain to have stopped a bit by then.
And by four o’clock it certainly was raining a good deal less, but by four o’clock some eight persons had assembled in the study and a most exciting discussion was in progress. Someone from Morgan’s had started a rumor to the effect that Fitzgerald, the vice-captain of the XV., was going to be dropped out of the side for the Tonwich match and his place given to Feversham, a reserve center from James’s. It was a startling piece of news that had to be discussed from every point of view.
First of all, would the side be improved? A doubtful matter. Fitzgerald had certainly been out of form this season, and he had played miserably in the last two matches, but he had experience; he would not be likely to lose his head in a big game, and Feversham, well, it would be his first school match. Altogether a doubtful issue, and, granted even that Feversham was better than Fitzgerald, would it be worth while in the long run to leave out the vice-captain and head of Buxton’s? Would it be doing a good service to Fernhurst football? Buxton’s was the athletic house; it had six school colors. The prestige of Fernhurst depended a good deal on the prestige of Buxton’s. Surely the prestige of Buxton’s was more important than a problematic improvement in the three-quarter line.
They argued it out for a quarter of an hour and then, just when the last point had been brought forward, and Roland had begun to feel that he was left with no possible excuse for not going down to the field, the tea arrived; and after that what chance did he stand? By the time tea was over it was nearly five o’clock. Choir practice would have started in a quarter of an hour: if he wanted to, he could not have gone down then. A bad business. But it had been a pleasant afternoon; it was raining like blazes still; very likely the ground would be again too wet for play to-morrow, and he would cut the walk and get his boots mended. No doubt things would pan out all right.
Things, however, did not on this occasion adapt themselves to Roland’s wishes. The rain stopped shortly after eight o’clock; a violent wind shrieked all night along the cloisters; next morning the violent wind was accompanied by bright sunshine; by half-past two the ground was almost dry. Roland played in his unstudded boots, and, as he had expected, the projecting hundredth of an inch sank deeply into his toe. Three days later he was sent up to the sanatorium with a poisoned foot.
And in the sanatorium he found himself in the same ward and alone with Howard, who was recovering from an attack of “flu” that had been incorrectly diagnosed as measles.
It was the first time they had met since the first evening of the term.
CHAPTER II
THE OUTCOME
WHEN two people are left alone together all day, with no amusement except their own conversation, they naturally become intimate, and as the episode of the dance was the only bond of interest between Howard and Roland, they turned to it at once. As soon as the matron had gone out of the room Howard asked if he had been forgiven.
“Oh, yes, a long time ago; it was a jolly rag.”
“Seen anything of your girl since then?”
“Heavens! no. Have you?”
“I should jolly well think so; one doesn’t let a thing like that slip through one’s fingers in a hurry. I go
