ning
together.

[19] #Sapped#: undermined.

What a bother all this explaining is! I wish we could get on without
it. But we can't. However, you'll all find, if you haven't found it
out already, that a time comes in every human friendship when you must
go down into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to
your friend, and wait in fear for his answer. A few moments may do it;
and it may be (most likely will be, as you are English boys) that you
will never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is
to be worth the name. You must find what is there, at the very root
and bottom of one another's hearts; and if you are at one there,
nothing on earth can, or at least ought to, sunder you.

EAST'S CONFESSIONS.

East had remained lying down until Tom finished speaking, as if
fearing to interrupt him; he now sat up at the table and leant his
head on one hand, taking up a pencil with the other, and working
little holes with it in the table cover. After a bit he looked up,
stopped the pencil, and said: "Thank you very much, old fellow;
there's no other boy in the house would have done it for me but you or
Arthur. I can see well enough," he went on, after a pause, "all the
best big fellows look on me with suspicion; they think I'm a
devil-may-care, reckless young scamp. So I am,--eleven hours out of
twelve,--but not the twelfth. Then all our contemporaries worth
knowing follow suit, of course; we're very good friends at games and
all that, but not a soul of them but you and Arthur ever tried to
break through the crust, and see whether there was anything at the
bottom of me: and then the bad ones I won't stand, and they know
that."

"Don't you think that's half fancy, Harry?"

"Not a bit of it," said East, bitterly, pegging away with his pencil.
"I see it all plain enough. Bless you, you think everybody's as
straightforward and kind-hearted as you are."

"Well, but what's the reason of it? There must be a reason. You can
play all the games as well as any one, and sing the best songs, and
are the best company in the house. You fancy you're not liked, Harry.
It's all fancy."

"I only wish it was, Tom. I know I could be popular enough with all
the bad ones, but that I won't have, and the good ones won't have me."

"Why not?" persisted Tom; "you don't drink or swear, or get out at
night; you never bully, or cheat at lessons. If you only showed you
liked it, you'd have all the best fellows in