on a certain day. Tuesday was my day, I
forget which his was, but it does not matter, because it is to be found
in histories and almanacs. My day is not a matter of interest to
anybody, but all the same I was born on a Tuesday, and things which I
have had special reason to remember or regret have generally happened
to me--so my mother says--on the same day. And it was on a Tuesday
that I lunched with the Warden and began a curious sort of friendship
with him. I suppose that I ought not to talk of a friendship between a
man like the Warden, who was a mighty man of learning, and myself, but
after all he gave me one of his books, and wrote in it, "To my young
friend and quondam companion." "Quondam" was rather a pity, perhaps;
it sounds pedantic, and the Warden was no pedant, unless he wanted to
snub people.

I went to his luncheon, and, having neuralgia, said nothing until he
told me that he knew Mr. Prettyman, who was one of the masters at
Cliborough. If the Warden knew Prettyman I guessed that he had also
heard something about me, and I thought I might as well stick up for
myself as far as possible, so I said that Mr. Prettyman was the sort of
man who, when you had lost a thing, always asked you where you had put
it. He had on one occasion actually done this to me, and annoyed me
very much. The Warden took no notice of my remark, and I was left to
my neuralgia until the end of the meal. The other men who were there
talked a lot; one of them said what he thought of Irving in _Hamlet_,
and another criticized the paintings of Watts; the Warden kept his
opinions to himself, and at two o'clock asked us what we were going to
do in the afternoon. All of us were bent on active employment, but
just as I was leaving the dining-room, he called me back and asked me
if I would go for a walk with him at three o'clock on the following
Thursday afternoon. I was too confused to remember what I said, and I
only recollect that I left his house feeling as if something very awful
was going to happen. I changed to play for the XX. against the XV. in
a kind of daymare, if there is a state of mind which can be so
described, and I had a good deal to say to Murray, as we walked down to
the Parks together, about my luck. Murray laughed all the way from St.
Cuthbert's to Keble; he kept on breaking out into small cackles, which,
of all the bad ways of laughing, must be the worst.

I started to play footer that afternoon without troub