t summer term that he and
Michael had taken to walking arm in arm during the 'quarter.' Merivale
turned to the left when he came out of school and Michael turned to the
right, so that they never met on their way nor walked home together
afterwards. Nevertheless, in the course of the term, the friendship had
grown, and once or twice Michael and Merivale had sat beneath the
hawthorn trees, between them a stained bag of cherries in the long cool
grass, while intermittently they clapped the boundary hits of a school
match that was clicking drowsily its progress through the summer
afternoon. Tentative confidences had been exchanged, and by reason of
its slower advance towards intimacy the friendship of Michael and
Merivale seemed built on a firmer basis than most of the sudden
affinities of school life. Now, as Michael recalled the personality of
Merivale with his vivid blue eyes and dull gold hair and his laugh and
freckled nose and curiously attractive walk, he had a great desire for
his company during the holidays. Miss Carthew was asked to write to Mrs.
Merivale in order to give the matter the weight of authority; but
Michael and Miss Carthew went off to Eastbourne before the answer
arrived. The sea sparkled, a cool wind blew down from Beachy Head; the
tamarisks on the front quivered; Eastbourne was wonderful, so wonderful
that Michael could not believe in the probability of Merivale, and the
more he thought about it, the more he felt sure that Mrs. Merivale would
write a letter of polite refusal. However, as if they were all people in
a book, everything happened according to Michael's most daringly
optimistic hopes. Mrs. Merivale wrote a pleasant letter to Miss Carthew
to say that her boy Alan was just now staying at Brighton with his uncle
Captain Ross, that she had written to her brother who had written back
to say that Alan and he would move on to Eastbourne, as it did not
matter a bit to him where he spent the next week. Mrs. Merivale added
that, if it were convenient, Alan might stay on with Michael when his
uncle left. By the same post came a letter from Merivale himself to say
that he and his uncle Kenneth were arriving next day, and that he jolly
well hoped Fane was going to meet him at the railway station.

Michael, much excited, waited until the train steamed in with its
blurred line of carriage windows, from one of which Merivale was
actually leaning. Michael waved: Merivale waved: the train stopped:
Merivale