onians, still it was evident they were sincerely trying to
acknowledge a little merit, a little good-fellowship among these strange
new contemporaries, however exuberantly uneducated they might appear to
Wykeham's adamantine mold.

Michael did not thrust himself upon any of these miniature societies in
the making, because the rather conscious efforts of diverse groups to
put themselves into accord with one another made him shy and restless.
Nobody yet among these freshmen seemed able to take his neighbor for
granted, and Michael fancied that himself as the product of a
day-school appeared to these cloistered catechumens as surprising and
disconcerting and vaguely improper as a ballet-girl or a French count.
At the same time he sympathized with their bewilderment and gave them
credit for their attempt not to let him think he confused their social
outlook. But the obviously sustained attempt depressed him with a sense
of fatigue. After all, his trousers were turned up at the bottom and the
last button of his waistcoat was undone. Failure to comply with the
Draconic code of dress could not be attributed to him, as mercilessly it
had served to banish into despised darkness a few scholars whose
trousers frayed themselves upon their insteps and whose waistcoats were
ignobly buttoned to the very end.

"An Old Giggleswickian," commented some one in reference to one of these
disgraced scholars, with such fanatic modishness that Michael was
surprised to see he wore the crude tie of the Old Carthusians; such
inexorable scorn consorted better with the rich sobriety of the Old
Wykehamist colors.

"Why, were you at school with him?" asked Michael quickly.

"Me? At Giggleswick?" stammered the Carthusian.

"Why not?" said Michael. "You seem to know all about him."

"Isn't your name Fane?" demanded the Carthusian abruptly, and when
Michael nodded, he said he remembered him at his private school.

"That'll help me along a bit, I expect," Michael prophesied.

"We were in the same form at Randell's. My name's Avery."

"I remember you," said Michael coldly. And he thought to himself how
little Avery's once stinging wit seemed to matter now. Really he thought
Avery was almost attractive with his fresh complexion and deep blue
eyes and girlish sensitive mouth, and when he rose to go out of
Lonsdale's room, he was not sorry that Avery rose too and walked out
with him into the quad.

"I say," Avery began impulsively. "Did I make an a