spending a year's close association with all those paint-boxes
and all that modeling wax and all those undestroyed proof-sheets of The
Oxford Looking-Glass. Finally, he had never noticed before how many
cigarettes Maurice smoked and with what skill he concealed in every sort
of receptacle the stained and twisted stumps that were left over. That
habit would be disastrous to their friendship, and Michael knew that
each fresh cigarette lighted by him would consume a trace more of the
friendship, until at last he would come to the state of observing him
with a cold and mute resentment. He was in this attitude of mind toward
his prospective companion, when Maurice came to see him. He seemed
nervous, lighting and concealing even more cigarettes than usual.

"About digs in Longwall," he began.

"I won't live in Longwall," affirmed Michael.

"Do you think you could find anybody else?"

"Why, have you got hold of some digs for three?" asked Michael
hopefully. This would be a partial solution of the difficulty, as long
as the third person was a tolerably good egg.

Maurice seemed embarrassed.

"No; well, as a matter of fact, Castleton rather wants to dig with me.
The New College man he was going to live with is going down, and he had
fixed up some rather jolly digs in Longwall. He offered me a share, but
of course I said I was digging with you, and there's no room for a
third."

"I can go in with Tommy Grainger and Lonny," said Michael quickly.

Maurice looked much relieved.

"As long as you don't feel I've treated you badly," he began.

"That's all right," said Michael, resenting for the moment Maurice's
obvious idea that he was losing something by the defection. But as soon
as he could think of Maurice unlinked to himself for a year, his
fondness for him began to return and his habit of perpetually smoking
cigarettes was less irritating. He accepted Maurice's invitation to stay
at Godalming in July with an inward amusement roused by the penitence
which had prompted it.

Stella's unexpectedly prompt departure to Vienna had left Michael free
to make a good many visits during the Long Vacation. He enjoyed least
the visit to High Towers, because he found it hard not to be a little
contemptuous of the adulation poured out upon Maurice by his father and
mother and sisters. Mr. Avery was a stockbroker with a passion for
keeping as young as his son. Mrs. Avery was a woman who, when her son
and her husband were not with he