ing_ to come and see you.
To be with you and Power at such a place as Semlyn must be--O Walter,
it almost makes me envious to think of you there. But I can't come,
and I'll tell you frankly the reason. I can't afford, or rather I
mean that my mother cannot afford, the necessary travelling expenses.
I look on you, Walter, as my best school friend, so I may as well say
at once that we are _very, very_ poor. If I could even get to you by
walking some of the way, and going third-class the rest, I would jump
at the chance, but--. Lucky fellow, _you_ know nothing of the _res
angusta domi_.

"You must be amused at the name of this place, Fuzby-le-Mud. What
charming prospects the name opens, does it not? I assure you the name
fits the place exactly. My goodness! how I do hate the place. You'll
ask why then we live here? Simply because we _must_. Some
misanthropic relation left us the house we live in, which saves rent.

"Yet, if you were with me, I think I could be happy even here. I
don't venture to ask you. First of all, we couldn't make you
one-tenth part as comfortable as you are at home; secondly, there
isn't the ghost of an amusement here, and if you came, you'd go back
to Saint Winifred's with a fit of blue devils, as I always do;
thirdly, the change from Semlyn to Fuzby-le-Mud would be like walking
from the Elysian fields and the asphodel meadows, into mere _borboros_
as old Edwards would say. So I _don't_ ask you; and yet if you could
come--why, the day would be marked with white in the dull calendar
of--Your ever affectionate--

"Harry Kenrick."

As Fuzby lay nearly in the route to Saint Winifred's, Walter, grieved
that his friend should be doomed to such dull holidays, determined, with
Mr Evson's leave, to pay him a three-days' visit on his way to school.
Accordingly, towards the close of the holidays, after a hopeful, a
joyous, and an affectionate farewell to all at home, he started for
Fuzby, from which he was to accompany Kenrick back to school; a visit
fraught, as it turned out, with evil consequences, and one which he
never afterwards ceased to look back upon with regret.

The railroad, after leaving far behind the glorious hills of Semlyn,
passes through country flatter and more uninteresting at every mile,
until it finds itself fairly committed to the fens. Nothing but dreary
dykes, muddy and straight, guarded by the ghosts of suicidal pollar