d-master always said it came from eating too much. But she was
a curious woman with a large imagination, and when I wouldn't eat
boiled rice and rhubarb-jam she told me that it was rice that made the
niggers such fine men; this, however, did not have the effect upon me
which she desired, for I was only eight years old, and had got an idea
that if I agreed to eat rice I should become black. That lady has made
me think ever since that from whatever cause an illness comes it is
never from over-eating.

So I soon rejected the theory of Fred being bilious, though any reason
for his unfitness except Nina would have been welcome. After a few
minutes spent in the unsatisfactory pursuit of finding out that my
batting average for St. Cuthbert's was 2.4, which I discovered not for
my own gratification but to please Fred, Henderson came in, looking
more freckled than ever and not in the least ill.

"You have got to come to Cornwall with us, hasn't he?" he said at once.

"The brute won't come," Fred said.

"You will have to; you know all the men, and they all want you to come.
We will have a rare good time--only Fred and Hawkins have to work hard,
the rest of us are not going to do much."

"I have to work all the vac," I said sorrowfully, and Fred, who had
smiled at my average, began to laugh once more, and he really seemed to
be much more cheerful when I saw him and Henderson off at the station,
than he had been earlier in the afternoon.

The last few days of the term were terribly dull, because some of us
had to do collections, and my papers did not altogether please Mr.
Edwardes. I promised again that I would do a lot of work in the vac;
but Jack Ward arranged that he would come down and stay with us
directly after the 'Varsity match was over, and I could not be expected
to allow him to loll in a boat and play the fool without restraint.

I had not been at home in June for years, and June is the month in
which to see my mother's garden. Everything went swimmingly for a day
or two; Fred made a lot of runs against Sussex, and Henderson--whose
blue was very uncertain--made seventy-six. I was enormously pleased,
and suggested at dinner that we should all go up to town to see Fred
play in the 'Varsity match. My father and mother were rather delighted
with the idea, and said they would go if Nina cared to come with us.

"It's the middle of the season," I said promptly, for I suppose I was
getting artful.

"I would rath