panionship
without any feeling of a blank when apart; where love cannot be said to
exist, and yet of which, if the irrevocableness of death remove one of
the two, there remains to the other a void that is felt recurrently for
the rest of his life whenever anything arises which that other person
alone could have felt and appreciated in quite the same way. It was no
David and Jonathan friendship which grew between Ishmael and Killigrew
such as may sometimes be found among boys, but it was an intimacy that,
in its aloof way, was to add something to the pattern of their lives
that neither would have found without it.

In after years, if Ishmael had examined into the thing, which he never
did, he would have seen that it was because, widely different as their
two natures were, each had a side that corresponded. For everyone has a
part of him, nearly always the larger, which is in relation with the
general run of the world, and also a part which is out of key with it.
Neither is more real than the other, though one is always bigger and
more insistent than the other, and in the relative proportions lies
every possibility. It was those parts of them which were out of key with
the ordinary acceptances that were attuned in Ishmael and Killigrew,
though neither was as yet aware they had such aspects, far less in what
measure. On that first afternoon and for several days afterwards they
were merely unthinkingly aware of a blind tolerance for each other that
rose more nearly to a warm respect over the matter of Killigrew's
badger.

This attractive though violent animal lurked in a hutch artfully
concealed between the roof and the rafters at the far end of the
dormitory where Killigrew slept. A trap door gave admission to the dim
three-cornered place where heads had to be bowed for fear of the beams
and voices and footsteps tuned down as low as possible lest someone in
authority should overhear. For the badger was contraband, or so its
owner, for greater glory, chose to assume, though as a matter of fact it
was more than likely had permission been asked to keep the beast it
would have been accorded, for St. Renny had its reputation as the great
naturalists' school to keep up. Half the glamour surrounding the savage
pet would have vanished, however, and the secret was jealously guarded,
the badger himself, by his unconquerable stench, being the only person
likely to give it away. Luckily the hutch was not directly over the
dormitory,