y when he was at
the door. It was the night of the match against the Bective Rangers;
and the ball was made just like a red and green apple only it opened
and it was full of the creamy sweets. And one day Boyle had said that
an elephant had two tuskers instead of two tusks and that was why he
was called Tusker Boyle but some fellows called him Lady Boyle because
he was always at his nails, paring them.
Eileen had long thin cool white hands too because she was a girl. They
were like ivory; only soft. That was the meaning of TOWER OF IVORY but
protestants could not understand it and made fun of it. One day he had
stood beside her looking into the hotel grounds. A waiter was running
up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff and a fox terrier was scampering
to and fro on the sunny lawn. She had put her hand into his pocket
where his hand was and he had felt how cool and thin and soft her hand
was. She had said that pockets were funny things to have: and then all
of a sudden she had broken away and had run laughing down the sloping
curve of the path. Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold
in the sun. TOWER OF IVORY. HOUSE OF GOLD. By thinking of things you
could understand them.
But why in the square? You went there when you wanted to do something.
It was all thick slabs of slate and water trickled all day out of tiny
pinholes and there was a queer smell of stale water there. And behind
the door of one of the closets there was a drawing in red pencil of a
bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick in each hand and underneath
was the name of the drawing:
Balbus was building a wall.
Some fellow had drawn it there for a cod. It had a funny face but it
was very like a man with a beard. And on the wall of another closet
there was written in backhand in beautiful writing:
Julius Caesar wrote The Calico Belly.
Perhaps that was why they were there because it was a place where some
fellows wrote things for cod. But all the same it was queer what Athy
said and the way he said it. It was not a cod because they had run
away. He looked with the others across the playground and began to feel
afraid.
At last Fleming said:
--And we are all to be punished for what other fellows did?
--I won't come back, see if I do, Cecil Thunder said. Three days' silence
in the refectory and sending us up for six and eight every minute.
--Yes, said Wells. And old Barrett has a new way of twisting the note
so that you
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