get back?"

"Five minutes ago."

They sat and looked at him as though he was disturbing them. They
evidently expected him to go quickly. Philip reddened.

"I'll be off. You might look in when you've done," he said to Rose.

"All right."

Philip closed the door behind him and limped back to his own study. He
felt frightfully hurt. Rose, far from seeming glad to see him, had looked
almost put out. They might never have been more than acquaintances. Though
he waited in his study, not leaving it for a moment in case just then Rose
should come, his friend never appeared; and next morning when he went in
to prayers he saw Rose and Hunter singing along arm in arm. What he could
not see for himself others told him. He had forgotten that three months is
a long time in a schoolboy's life, and though he had passed them in
solitude Rose had lived in the world. Hunter had stepped into the vacant
place. Philip found that Rose was quietly avoiding him. But he was not the
boy to accept a situation without putting it into words; he waited till he
was sure Rose was alone in his study and went in.

"May I come in?" he asked.

Rose looked at him with an embarrassment that made him angry with Philip.

"Yes, if you want to."

"It's very kind of you," said Philip sarcastically.

"What d'you want?"

"I say, why have you been so rotten since I came back?"

"Oh, don't be an ass," said Rose.

"I don't know what you see in Hunter."

"That's my business."

Philip looked down. He could not bring himself to say what was in his
heart. He was afraid of humiliating himself. Rose got up.

"I've got to go to the Gym," he said.

When he was at the door Philip forced himself to speak.

"I say, Rose, don't be a perfect beast."

"Oh, go to hell."

Rose slammed the door behind him and left Philip alone. Philip shivered
with rage. He went back to his study and turned the conversation over in
his mind. He hated Rose now, he wanted to hurt him, he thought of biting
things he might have said to him. He brooded over the end to their
friendship and fancied that others were talking of it. In his
sensitiveness he saw sneers and wonderings in other fellows' manner when
they were not bothering their heads with him at all. He imagined to
himself what they were saying.

"After all, it wasn't likely to last long. I wonder he ever stuck Carey at
all. Blighter!"

To show his indifference he struck up a violent friendship with a boy
called Sharp w