's nest in the front of May,
and in all the long imagined delights of spring, Michael was left again
with Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler to spend a month of rain at a bleak
golf-resort, where he was only kept from an unvoiced misery by reading
'Brother takes the hand of brother' in Longfellow's Psalm of Life,
melting thereat into a flood of tears that relieved his lonely
oppression.

Even the summer term was a bondage with its incessant fagging for balls,
while the lords of the House practised assiduously at the nets. He and
Alan walked together sometimes during the 'quarter' and held on to the
stray threads of their friendship that still resisted the exacting knife
of the House's etiquette; but it became increasingly difficult under the
stress of boarding-school existence. Indeed, it was only the knowledge
that this summer term would end the miserable time and that Alan was
catching up to Michael's class which supported the two friends through
their exile. Michael was savagely jealous when he saw Alan leaving the
School at five o'clock arm in arm with another boy. He used to sulk for
a week afterwards, avoiding Alan in the 'quarter' and ostentatiously
burying himself in a group of boarders. And if Alan would affectionately
catch him up when he was alone, Michael would turn on him and with
bitter taunts suggest that Alan's condescension was unnecessary. In
School itself Michael was bored by his sojourn both in the Middle Fourth
and in the Upper Fourth B. The Cicero and the Thucydides were vilely
dull; all the dullest books of the AEneid were carefully chosen, while
Mr. Marjoribanks and Mr. Gale were both very dull teachers. At the end
of the summer examinations, Michael found himself at the bottom of the
Upper Fourth B in Classics, in Drawing and in English. However, the
knowledge that next term would now inevitably find him and Alan in the
same class, meeting again as equals, as day-boys gloriously free,
sustained him through a thunderous interview with Dr. Brownjohn. He
emerged from the Doctor's study in a confusion of abusive epithets to
find Alan loyally waiting for him by the great plaster cast of the
Laocoon.

"Damn old Brownjohn," growled Michael. "I think he's the damnedest old
beast that ever lived. I do hate him."

"Oh, bother him," cried Alan, dancing with excitement. "Look here, I
say, at this telegram. It's just arrived. The porter was frightfully
sick at having to give me a telegram. He is a sidy swine. What _do_