indefatigable friend had further informed him that one might be a Fabian and have a red tie, and encourage the other Fabians to wash. Or one might ride.
"One might—" Peter had made a suggestion of his own—"ride a motor bicycle. I saw a man on one to-day; I mean he had been on it—it was on him at the moment; it had chucked him off and was dancing on him, and something that smelt was coming out of a hole. He was such a long way from home; I was sorry about it."
His friend had said, "Serve him right. Brute," expressing the general feeling of the moment about men who rode motor bicycles.
"Isn't it funny," Peter had reflectively said. "They must get such an awful headache first—and then to be chucked off and jumped on so hard, and covered with the smelly stuff—and then to have to walk home dragging it, when it's deformed and won't run on its wheels. Unless, of course, one is blown up into little bits and is at rest. … But it is so awfully, frightfully ugly, to look at and to smell and to hear. Like your wallpaper, you know."
Peter's eyes had rested contentedly on his own peaceful green walls. He really hadn't felt in the least like "going in for" anything, either motor bicycling or examinations.
"I suppose you'll just footle, then," his friend had summed it up, and left him, because it was half-past six, and they had dinner at that strange hour. That was why they were able to run it into their tea, since obviously nothing could be done between, even by Peter's energetic friend. This friend had little hope for Peter. Of course, he would just footle; he always had. But one was, nevertheless, rather fond of him. One would like him to do things, and have a sporting time.
As a matter of fact, Peter gave his friend an agreeable surprise. He went in, or attempted to go in, for a good many things. He plunged ardently into football, though he had never been good, and though he always got extremely tired over it, which was supposed to be bad for him, and frequently got smashed up, which he knew to be unpleasant for him. This came to an abrupt end half way through the term. Then he took, quite suddenly, to motor bicycling. All this is merely to say that the incalculable factor that sets temperament and natural predilection at nought had entered into Peter's life. Of course, it was absurd. Urquhart, being what he was, could successfully do a number of things that Peter, being what he was, must inevitably come to grief over. But still he indomitably tried. He even profaned the roads and outraged all æsthetic fitness in the endeavour, clacking into the country upon a hired motor-bicycle and making his head ache badly and getting very cold, and being from time to time thrown off and jumped upon and going about in bandages, telling enquirers that he supposed he must have knocked against something somewhere, he didn't remember exactly. The energetic friend had been caustic.
"I've no intention of sympathising with you," he had remarked; "because you deserve all you get. You ass, you know when it's possible to get smashed up over anything you're safe to do it, so what on earth do you expect when you take up a thing like this?"
"Instant death every minute," Peter had truly replied. (His nerves had been a little shaken by his last ride, which had set his trouser-leg on fire suddenly, and nearly, as he remarked, burnt him to death.) "But I go on. I expect the worst, but I am resigned. The hero is not he who feels no fear, for that were brutal and irrational."
"What do you do it for?" his friend had querulously and superfluously demanded.
"It's so frightfully funny," Peter had said, reflecting, "that I should be doing it. That's why, I suppose. It makes me laugh. You might take to the fiddle if you wanted a good laugh. I take to my motor-bicycle. It's the only way to cheer oneself up when life is disappointing, to go and do something entirely ridiculous. I used to stand on my head when I'd been rowed or sat upon, or when there was a beastly wind; it cheered me a lot. I've given that up now; so I motor-bicycle. Besides," he had added, "you said I must go in for something. You wouldn't like it if I did my embroidery all day."
But on the days when he had been motor-bicycling, Peter had to do a great deal of embroidery in the evenings, for the sake of the change.
"I don't wonder you need it," a friend of the more æsthetically cultured type remarked one evening, finding him doing it. "You've been playing round with the Urquhart-Fitzmaurice lot to-day, haven't you? Nice man, Fitzmaurice, isn't he? I like his tie-pins. You know, we almost lost him last summer. He hung in the balance, and our hearts were in our mouths. But he is still with us. You look as if he had been very much with you, Margery."
Peter looked meditative and stitched. "Old Fitz," he murmured, "is one of the best. A real sportsman. … Don't, Elmslie; I didn't think of that, I heard Childers say it. Childers also said, 'By Jove, old Fitz knocks spots out of 'em every time,' but I don't know what he meant. I'm trying to learn to talk like Childers. When I can do that, I shall buy a tie-pin like Fitzmaurice's, only mine will be paste. Streater's is paste; he's another nice man."
"He certainly is. In fact, Margery, you really are not particular enough about the company you keep. You shun neither the over-bred nor the under-bred. Personally I affect neither, because they don't amuse me. You embrace both."
"Yes," Peter mildly agreed. "But I don't embrace Streater, you know. I draw the line at Streater. Everyone draws the line at Streater; he's of the baser sort, like his tie-pins. Wouldn't it be vexing to have people always drawing lines at you. There'd be nothing you could well do, except to draw one at them, and they wouldn't notice yours, probably, if they'd got theirs in first. You could only sneer. One can always sneer. I sneered to-day."
"You can't sneer," Elmslie told him brutally; "and you can't draw lines; and what on earth you hang about with so many different sorts of idiots for I don't know. … I think, if circumstances absolutely compelled me to make bosom friends of either, I should choose the under-bred poor rather than the over-bred rich. That's the sort of man I've no use for. The sort of man with so much money that he has to chuck it all about the place to get rid of it. The sort of man who talks to you about beagles. The sort of man who has a different fancy waistcoat for each day of the week."
"Well," said Peter, "that's nice. I wish I had."
His friend turned a grave regard on him. "The sort of man who rides a motor-bicycle. … You really should, Margery," he went on, "learn to be more fastidious. You mustn't let yourself be either dazzled by fancy waistcoats or sympathetically moved by unclean collars. Neither is interesting."
"I never said they were," Peter said. "It's the people inside them. … "
Peter, in brief, was a lover of his kind, and the music life played to him was of a varied and complex nature. But, looking back, it was easy to see how there had been, running through all the variations, a dominant motive in the piece.
As Peter listened to the boiling of his egg, and thought how hard it would be when he took it off, the dominant motive came in and stood by the fire, and looked down on Peter. He jingled things in his pockets and swayed to and fro on his heels like his uncle Evelyn, and he was slim in build, and fair and pale and clear-cut of face, and gentle and rather indifferent in manner, and soft and casual in voice, and he was in his fourth year, and life went extremely well with him.
"It boils," he told Peter, of the egg.
Peter took it off and fished it out with a spoon, and began rummaging for an egg-cup and salt and marmalade and buns in the locker beneath his window seat. Having found these things, he composed himself in the fat arm-chair to dine, with a sigh of satisfaction.
"You slacker," Urquhart observed. "Well, can you come to-morrow? The drag starts at eleven."
"It's quite hard," said Peter, unreasonably disappointed in it. "Oh, yes, rather; I'll come."
