t a bother all this explaining is! I wish we could get on without
it. But we can't. However, you'll all find, if you haven't found it out
already, that a time comes in every human friendship when you must go
down into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your
friend, and wait in fear for his answer. A few moments may do it; and
it may be (most likely will be, as you are English boys) that you will
never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be
worth the name. You must find what is there, at the very root and bottom
of one another's hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth
can or at least ought to sunder you.

East had remained lying down until Tom finished speaking, as if fearing
to interrupt him; he now sat up at the table, and leant his head on one
hand, taking up a pencil with the other, and working little holes with
it in the table-cover. After a bit he looked up, stopped the pencil,
and said, "Thank you very much, old fellow. There's no other boy in
the house would have done it for me but you or Arthur. I can see well
enough," he went on, after a pause, "all the best big fellows look on me
with suspicion; they think I'm a devil-may-care, reckless young scamp.
So I am--eleven hours out of twelve, but not the twelfth. Then all of
our contemporaries worth knowing follow suit, of course: we're very good
friends at games and all that, but not a soul of them but you and
Arthur ever tried to break through the crust, and see whether there was
anything at the bottom of me; and then the bad ones I won't stand and
they know that."

"Don't you think that's half fancy, Harry?"

"Not a bit of it," said East bitterly, pegging away with his pencil.
"I see it all plain enough. Bless you, you think everybody's as
straightforward and kindhearted as you are."

"Well, but what's the reason of it? There must be a reason. You can play
all the games as well as any one and sing the best song, and are the
best company in the house. You fancy you're not liked, Harry. It's all
fancy."

"I only wish it was, Tom. I know I could be popular enough with all the
bad ones, but that I won't have, and the good ones won't have me."

"Why not?" persisted Tom; "you don't drink or swear, or get out at
night; you never bully, or cheat at lessons. If you only showed you
liked it, you'd have all the best fellows in the house running after
you."

"Not I," said East. Then with an effort he went on, "