by it I was able to see that Doe was very red and clearly
wishing he had not made his last remark. My immediate desire, on
witnessing his discomfiture, was to put him at his ease by
pretending that I saw nothing unusual in the words. So I quickly
evolved a very casual question.

"What! Better than your father and mother?"

"Well, you see--" and he shifted uneasily--"you know perfectly well
that my father and mother are dead."

"O law!" I said.

Awkwardly the conversation dropped. And, as I lay upon my pillow,
down went my brain along a line of wandering thoughts. Doe's remark,
I reflected, was like that of a school-girl who adored her mistress.
Perhaps Doe was a girl. After all, I had no certain knowledge that
he wasn't a girl with his hair cut short. I pictured him, then, with
his hair, paler than straw, reaching down beneath his shoulders, and
with his brown eyes and parted lips wearing a feminine appearance.
As I produced this strange figure, I began to feel, somewhere in the
region of my waist, motions of calf-love for the girl Doe that I had
created. But, as Doe's prowess at cricket asserted itself upon my
mind, his gender became conclusively established, and--ah, well, I
was half asleep.

But, so strange were the processes of my childish mind that this
feeling of love at first sight for the girl Doe, who never existed,
I count as one of the strongest forces that helped to create my
later affection for the real Edgar Gray Doe.

"I think you and I must have been intended to come together,
Rupert," I heard him saying later on, as I was fast dozing off. "I
s'pose that's why we were called Doe and Ray."

"Er," I dreamily assented from beneath the bedclothes.

And still later a voice said:

"It was rather fun being whacked side by side, being twins."

From a great distance I heard it, as I listened upon the frontier of
sleep. And, recalling without any effort Radley's words: "There's
nothing like suffering together to cement a friendship," I crossed
the frontier. All coiled up again, my knees nearly touching my chin,
I passed into the country of dreams.

CHAPTER II

RUPERT OPENS A GREAT WAR

Sec.1

Poor Mr. Caesar, with the weak eyes! He had left his class-room door
unlocked. _Golly_, so he had! And since the bell had only just
ceased to echo, and Mr. Caesar would certainly be some minutes late,
what was to stop us from conducting a few operations within the
class-room? Under the command of P