weighed lately," replied
Crawley. "You are very kind, I am sure, but does your father know?
Perhaps he has made arrangements to fill his house."

"Oh no! it is all right. My father does not bother his head about such
things; he is perpetually going to London, and thinking of business.
But my mother and sisters want you to come, and have told me to ask
you."

"I am much obliged to them, they are very good. And I should like it
very much," said Crawley, somewhat more hesitatingly than it was his
wont to speak.

For this invitation was rather a hot coal on his head. Gould had
courted his acquaintance and he had rather snubbed him, not liking him
particularly. He was rich, which mattered to nobody, but he gave
himself airs on the strength of it, and that did. There are few things
more irritating than to hear anyone perpetually bragging of his money,
and if you happen to be poor yourself I do not think that it helps you
to sit and listen more patiently. And then Gould was an injudicious
flatterer; he made the flattered fellow uncomfortable. It is a nice
thing, flattery, and causes one to feel good all over, if it is
delicately applied with a camel's-hair brush, as it were. But Gould
laid it on with a trowel. He only courted success; if anyone were down
he would be the first to spurn him.

Now, Crawley was undoubtedly the boy held in greatest estimation in the
school: captain and treasurer of the cricket and football clubs, good-
looking, pleasant in manners, open, generous, clever at lessons, he was
a special favourite with masters and boys, and therefore Gould burnt his
incense before him. For to be Crawley's chum was to gain a certain
amount of consideration in the school, and Gould did not mind shining
with a reflected light. He was not like Saurin in that respect, whose
egotism saved him at least from being a toad-eater. Gould was vain
enough, but his vanity was of a different kind. But hitherto all his
efforts had been in vain, and Crawley had rather snubbed him. This had
not prevented Gould from talking about him, exaggerating his merits, and
bragging about his intimacy with him at home. It was always "my friend
Crawley and I" did this, that, and the other. So that Mrs Gould wrote
to him one day asking whether he would not like his inseparable to come
and stay with him during the holidays; and Clarissa Gould added a
postscript to the effect that as he was so clever he would be of great
use to the