l find very hard to bear. Always
remember that you have a friend in me. I have suffered very much,
and suffering makes the heart yearn to comfort others. Be very
chivalrous always, and remember that of all your ideals your mother
should be the highest. I hope that you'll be able to come and stay
with us soon after Easter. God bless you, dear boy, and thank you
very much for your expression of the sorrow I know you share with
me._

_Your loving_

_Maud Ross._

_I wonder if you remember how you used to love Don Quixote as a
child. Will you always be a Don Quixote, however much people may
laugh? It really means just being a gentleman._

Chapter XIII: _Sentiment_

Back once more upon his pedestal in the frieze, Michael devoted himself
to enjoying, while still they were important to his life, the
conversation and opinions of the immortals. He gave up worrying about
the war and yielded himself entirely either to the blandishments of his
seniority in the school or of dreams about himself at Oxford, now within
sight of attainment. Four more terms of school would set him free, and
he had ambitions to get into the Fifteen in his last year. He would then
be able to look back with satisfaction to the accomplishment of
something. He actually threw himself into the rowdiest vanguard of
Mafeking's celebrators, and accepted the occasion as an excuse to make a
noise without being compelled to make the noise alone. These Bacchanalia
of patriotism were very amusing, and perhaps it was a good thing for the
populace to be merry; moreover, since he now had Alan to idealize, he
could afford to let his high thoughts of England's duty and England's
honour become a little less stringent.

He spent much time with Alan in discussing Oxford and in building up a
most elaborate and logical scheme of their life at the University. He
was anxious that Alan should leave the classical Lower Sixth, into which
he had climbed somewhat hardly, and come to join him in the leisure of
the History Sixth. He spoke of Strang whose Captaincy of Cricket shed
such lustre on the form, of Terry whose Captaincy of Football next year
would shed an equal lustre. But Alan, having found the journey to the
Lower Sixth so arduous, was disinclined to be cheated of the
intellectual eminence of the Upper Sixth which had been his Valhalla so
long.

Michael and Alan had been looking forward to a visit to C