ifteen years since you used to do my Latin exercises for me."

"Not changed, eh?" he answered, still smiling, and yet speaking with a
sort of ingenuous dismay.

Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been, in those Latin days, a
victim of juvenile irony. He used to bring a bottle of medicine to
school and take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and every day at
two o'clock, half an hour before the rest of us were liberated, an old
nurse with bushy eyebrows came and fetched him away in a carriage. His
extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his bottle of medicine, which
suggested a vague analogy with the sleeping-potion in the tragedy, caused
him to be called Juliet. Certainly Romeo's sweetheart hardly suffered
more; she was not, at least, a standing joke in Verona. Remembering
these things, I hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was still
the same good fellow who used to do my Latin for me. "We were capital
friends, you know," I went on, "then and afterwards."

"Yes, we were very good friends," he said, "and that makes it the
stranger I shouldn't have known you. For you know, as a boy, I never had
many friends, nor as a man either. You see," he added, passing his hand
over his eyes, "I am rather dazed, rather bewildered at finding myself
for the first time--alone." And he jerked back his shoulders nervously,
and threw up his head, as if to settle himself in an unwonted position. I
wondered whether the old nurse with the bushy eyebrows had remained
attached to his person up to a recent period, and discovered presently
that, virtually at least, she had. We had the whole summer day before
us, and we sat down on the grass together and overhauled our old
memories. It was as if we had stumbled upon an ancient cupboard in some
dusky corner, and rummaged out a heap of childish playthings--tin
soldiers and torn story-books, jack-knives and Chinese puzzles. This is
what we remembered between us.

He had made but a short stay at school--not because he was tormented, for
he thought it so fine to be at school at all that he held his tongue at
home about the sufferings incurred through the medicine-bottle, but
because his father thought he was learning bad manners. This he imparted
to me in confidence at the time, and I remember how it increased my
oppressive awe of Mr. Pickering, who had appeared to me in glimpses as a
sort of high priest of the proprieties. Mr. Pickering was a widower--a
fact whi