year they generously gave him a hundred and
twenty yards, and he never came in at all, for some unexplained reason.
After that he passed as an athlete, and considered himself an authority,
especially at home, on all matters relating to sport. Joe, on the other
hand, was a dreamy boy; he wrote poems, when he should have been
construing Caesar, and gave several other indications that he was
destined to a great career. He cared as little about sport as Magnus
did about poetry. This probably was the reason the two were such chums.
They never trod on one another's toes.

When they went for a walk, Joe usually dawdled along trying to think of
rhymes for "nightingale," and "poppy," and "windmill," and the other
beauties of Nature which met his eye or ear; while Magnus stopped behind
to vault gates (which always caught his foot as he went over), and do
"sprints" with wayside animals, in which the wayside animals usually
managed to pull off the event. I'm not sure that they ever talked to
one another, which again may have been a reason for their great
friendship. If they did, nobody ever heard them; indeed, they never
seemed to look at one another, or to be aware of one another's
existence, which no doubt fully explains their mutual devotion.

The only real bond of sympathy that I can think of was that they were
always going in for examinations together, and always getting plucked.
Had the name of either ever appeared on a prize list, I am convinced
there would have been a panic in the school. Even when they entered for
the Wheeler Exhibition for boys under 15, Joe being on the day of
examination 14 years 364 days, and Magnus being a week younger, no one
supposed for a moment they had a chance against the fellows of eleven
and twelve who went up against them; and no one was disappointed.

I asked Magnus afterwards how it was he came to grief.

"It was those beasts, the Greek gods. I'd like to kick them," said he.

By an odd coincidence I put the same question on the following day to my
young brother.

"Eh?" said he, "what do you call them, you know, the thingamybobs that
lived in Mount what's its name? I'm sick of 'em."

"Mount Olympus, you mean?"

"That's it--"

"Mount Olympus, Pack of Shrimpers."

This was a good specimen of my brother's poetic style!

I gathered from this that a new bond of sympathy had arisen between the
two friends. They had both been ploughed in an unexpected paper on
Greek Mythology,