her on
it. They had cried to him from the car, waving their hands:

--Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

--Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

He was caught in the whirl of a scrimmage and, fearful of the flashing
eyes and muddy boots, bent down to look through the legs. The fellows
were struggling and groaning and their legs were rubbing and kicking
and stamping. Then Jack Lawton's yellow boots dodged out the ball and
all the other boots and legs ran after. He ran after them a little way
and then stopped. It was useless to run on. Soon they would be going
home for the holidays. After supper in the study hall he would change
the number pasted up inside his desk from seventy-seven to seventy-six.

It would be better to be in the study hall than out there in the cold.
The sky was pale and cold but there were lights in the castle. He
wondered from which window Hamilton Rowan had thrown his hat on the
ha-ha and had there been flowerbeds at that time under the windows. One
day when he had been called to the castle the butler had shown him the
marks of the soldiers' slugs in the wood of the door and had given him
a piece of shortbread that the community ate. It was nice and warm to
see the lights in the castle. It was like something in a book. Perhaps
Leicester Abbey was like that. And there were nice sentences in Doctor
Cornwell's Spelling Book. They were like poetry but they were only
sentences to learn the spelling from.

Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey
Where the abbots buried him.
Canker is a disease of plants,
Cancer one of animals.

It would be nice to lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his
head upon his hands, and think on those sentences. He shivered as if he
had cold slimy water next his skin. That was mean of Wells to shoulder
him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuff
box for Wells's seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. How
cold and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once seen a big rat
jump into the scum. Mother was sitting at the fire with Dante waiting
for Brigid to bring in the tea. She had her feet on the fender and her
jewelly slippers were so hot and they had such a lovely warm smell!
Dante knew a lot of things. She had taught him where the Mozambique
Channel was and what was the longest river in America and what was the
name of the highest mountain in the moon. Father Arnall knew more than
Dante because he was a priest but both his father an