harply, he turned and went towards the
saloon.

"I hope to goodness it'll be smooth all the way over," he said to
himself.

THE THIRD CHAPTER

1

Roger Carey and Gilbert Farlow met him at Euston.

"Hilloa, Quinny!" Gilbert said, "I've been made a dramatic critic, and
I'm to do my first play to-night!"

"Hurray!" he answered, and turned to greet Roger.

"We've bagged a taxi," Gilbert went on. "The driver looks cheeky ...
that's why we hired him. We'll give him a tuppenny tip and then we'll
give him in charge!..."

"All taxi drivers are cheeky," Roger interrupted.

"But this is a very cheeky one!... Hi, porter!"

It was extraordinarily good to be with Gilbert and Roger again;
extraordinarily good to hear Gilbert's exaggerated speech and see him
ordering people about without hurting their feelings; extraordinarily
good to listen to Roger's slow, unflickering voice as he stated the
facts ... for Roger had always stated the facts. In all their
discussions, it was Roger who reminded them of the essential things,
refusing persistently to be carried away by Gilbert's imagination or
Ninian's impatience. People were sometimes irritated by Roger's slow,
imperturbable way of speaking ... they called him a prig ... but as they
knew him better, they lost their irritation and thought of him with
respect. "But we're all prigs," Gilbert said once in reply to some one
who sneered at Roger. "Ninian and Quinny and Roger and me, we're
frightful prigs. That's because we're so much brainier than most people.
Of course, Roger was Second Wrangler, and that affects a man, I suppose,
but he's terribly clever, young Roger is!..."

As they drove home, Gilbert told their news to Henry.

"Ninian's coming up to-morrow ... sooner than he meant to. He's very
keen on going to Harland and Wolff's, but he's afraid he's too old to
begin building ships. Tom Arthurs says he ought to have gone straight to
the Island from Rumpell's instead of going to Cambridge, and poor old
Ninian was horribly blasphemous about it all. It's funny to hear him
trying to talk like an Orangeman ... he mixes it up with Devonshire
dialect ... and thinks he's imitating Tom Arthurs. I suppose he'll have
to content himself with building railways and things like that. It's a
great pity!"

"I don't believe he really wants to be a shipbuilder," Roger said. "He
likes Tom Arthurs, and he wants to be what Arthurs is. That's all. If
Arthurs were a comedian, Ninian wo