of which
increased in proportion as it grew less and less justifiable. But now
he had suffered a salutary rebuke. He had been openly blamed, openly
slighted, and openly set aside, and was unable to gainsay the justice of
the proceeding. He felt that with every boy in the school, who had any
right feeling, Bliss was now regarded as a more upright and honourable--
nay, even as a more important and influential, person than himself.
Among other mortifications, it galled him especially to hear the warm
thanks and cordial praise which Power and Walter and Henderson expressed
when first they happened to meet Bliss. He saw Walter wring his hand,
and overheard him saying in that genial tone in which he himself had
once been addressed so often--"Thank you, Bliss, a thousand times for
saving my dear little brother from the hands of those brutes. Charlie
and I will not soon forget how much we owe you." Walter said it with
tears in his eyes, and Bliss answered with a happy smile--"Don't thank
me, Walter; I only did what any fellow would have done who was worth
anything."

"And you'll look after Charlie for me now and then, will you?"

"That I will," said Bliss; "but you needn't fear for him--he's a hero, a
regular hero--that's what I call him, and I'd do anything for him."

So Kenrick, vexed and discontented, almost hid himself in those days in
his own study, the victim of that most wearing of intolerable and
sickening diseases--a sense of shame. Except to play football
occasionally, he seldom left his room or took any exercise, and fell
into a dispirited, broken way of life, feeling unhappy and alone. He
had no associates now except his inferiors, for his conduct had
forfeited the regard of his equals, and with many of them he was at open
feud. The only pleasure left to him was desperately hard work. Not
only was he stimulated by a fiery ambition, a mad desire to excel in the
half-year's competition, and show what he was yet capable of, and so to
some extent redeem his unhappy position, but also his heart was fixed on
getting, if possible, the chief scholarship of Saint Winifred's--a
scholarship sufficiently valuable to pay the main part of those college
expenses which it would be otherwise impossible for his mother to bear.
He feared, indeed, that he had little or no chance against Power, or
even against Walter, who were both competitors, but he would not give up
all hope. His abilities were of the most brilliant ord