augh had gone round the desks when his humble total closed the list,
and he had joined in it to show them he didn't care. And then the class
had been dismissed, and there had been friendly good-byes, arrangements
for walking home in company or for meeting during the holidays--for all
but him; he had gone out alone--and the dull blankness had come over him
from which he has only just recovered.

But, for the present at all events, he has got rid of it completely; he
is going home, where at least he is not despised, where he will find a
sanctuary from gibes and jostlings and impositions; and the longer he
thinks of this the higher his spirits rise, and he steps briskly, with a
kind of exultation, until the people he passes in the streets turn and
look at him, struck by his expression. 'They can see how jolly I'm
feeling,' he thinks with a smile.

The dusk is falling, and the shops he passes are brilliant with lights
and decorations, but he does not stop to look at any of them; his mind
is busy with settling how he shall employ himself on this the first
evening of his liberty, the first for so long on which he could feel his
own master.

At first he decides to read. Is there not some book he had begun and
meant to finish, so many days ago now that he has even forgotten what it
was all about, and only remembers that it was exciting?

And yet, he thinks, he won't read to-night--not on the very first night
of the holidays. Quite lately--yesterday or the day before--his mother
had spoken to him, gently but very seriously, about what she called the
morose and savage fits which would bring misery upon him if he did not
set himself earnestly to overcome them.

And there were times, he knew, when it seemed as if a demon possessed
him and drove him to wound even those who loved him and whom he
loved--times when their affection only roused in him some hideous spirit
of sullen contradiction.

He feels softened now somehow, and has a new longing for the love he has
so often harshly repulsed. He _will_ overcome this sulkiness of his; he
will begin this very evening; as soon as he gets home he will tell his
mother that he is sorry, that he does love her really, only that when
these fits come on him he hardly knows what he says or does.

And she will forgive him, only too gladly; and his mind will be quite at
ease again. No, not quite; there is still something he must do before
that: he has a vague recollection of a long-standing