before Miss Fraenkel
arrived; a sort of presentiment, if you like.

"Do tell us about your brother, Mr. Carville," said Bill. "What happened
to him?"

Mr. Carville struck a match and puffed away in the conscientious manner
demanded by a corn-cob.

"Why, of course," he said, carefully expelling a jet of smoke from the
corner of his closed lips, "he came back, my brother did."

Bill looked at him in tragic annoyance.

CHAPTER VIII

HE CONTINUES HIS TALE

"It was like this," he went on. "Apart from a general dislike of doing
things that boys consider 'bad form' my brother had no scruples at all.
For instance, if a stranger cheeks you, you _feel_ as if you'd like to
hit him. My young brother _did_ hit him. What was still more to his
advantage he gave people the impression that he was always ready to jump
over the table at them. My impression is that the old Head didn't dare
flog him and had been glad to find an excuse to get rid of him. It
didn't occur to the old chap that my brother wouldn't come home. He
little knew my brother!

"Several days passed and we began to get anxious. My mother telegraphed
the Head and the railway company. No good. Now it's all very well for
well-meaning people to say tell the police,' but when you are up against
a private disgrace, you think pretty hard before you walk into a police
station. My brother was fifteen and big for his age. Why, he might
disguise himself anyhow. The week-end came before we made up our minds
that the police would have to be notified. I went to Scotland Yard on
the Saturday afternoon with a reward and description. I don't pretend
that I felt very anxious about him. He had never sought either my
friendship or my protection, and we looked at life from totally
different angles. To me there was something common and dirty about an
intrigue with a school-slavey. My brother, I thought, should have been
above that sort of thing. But he wasn't and he never has been. With him
a woman is just a woman. He raises his hand and they come running, and
apologizing if they're late. So after I had been to Scotland Yard, I
stayed down West, went to a theatre and looked in at _El Vino_ for a
glass of port afterwards. _El Vino_ in those days had a curious
reputation, quite different from the Continental or the Leicester
Lounge. No one would ever suggest you were a loose fish because you
drank a dock-glass in _El Vino_, though there were women there every
night. Just as I