iversities between them.

"Tell me about school," she cried, with a pretty imperious air; and
Jock, who never desired any better, obeyed.

CHAPTER XXII.

A PAIR OF FRIENDS.

After this it came to be a very common occurrence that Jock and Bice
should meet in the afternoon. He for one thing had lost his
companionship with Lucy, and had been straying forth forlorn not knowing
what to do with himself, taking long walks which he did not care for,
and longing for the intellectual companionship of MTutor, or even of the
other fellows who, if not intellectual, at least were acquainted with
the same things, and accustomed to the same occupations as himself. It
worked in him a tremor and commotion of a kind in which he was wholly
inexperienced, when he saw the slim figure of the girl approaching him,
through the paths of the shrubberies, or across the glades of the park.
He said to himself once or twice, "What a bore;" but those words did not
express his feelings. It was not a bore, it was something very
different. He could not explain the mingled reluctance and pleasure of
his own mood, the little tumult that arose in him when he saw her. He
wanted to turn his back and rush away, and yet he wanted to be there
waiting for her, seeing her approach step by step. He had no notion what
his own mingled sentiments meant. But Bice to all appearance had neither
the reluctance nor the excitement. She came running to her playmate
whenever she saw him with frank satisfaction. "I was looking for you,"
she would say, "Let us go out into the park where nobody can see us.
Run, or some one will be coming," and then she would fly over stock and
stone, summoning him after her. There were many occasions when Jock did
not approve, but he always followed her, though with internal
grumblings, in which he indulged consciously, making out his own
annoyance to be very great. "Why can't she let me alone?" he said to
himself; but when it occurred that Bice did leave him alone, and made no
appearance, his sense of injury was almost bitter. On such occasions he
said cutting things within himself, and was very satirical as to the
stupidity of girls who were afraid to wet their feet, and estimated the
danger of catching a cold as greater than any natural advantage. For
Jock had all that instinctive hostility to womankind, which is natural
to the male bosom, except perhaps at one varying period of life. They
had no place in the economy of his existe