of British
Birds."

[15] #Bird-fancier#: one who keeps birds for sale.

THE INVITATION.

"Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this half. How
that stuff in the bottle smells! Never mind, I'm not going to stop,
but you come up after prayers to our study; you know young Arthur;
we've got Gray's study. We'll have a good supper and talk about birds'
nesting."

Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and promised to
be up without fail.

As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth form boys had
withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own rooms, and the
rest, or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the Hall, Tom and
Arthur, having secured their allowances of bread and cheese, started
on their feet to catch the eye of the praepostor of the week, who
remained in charge during supper, walking up and down the Hall. He
happened to be an easy-going fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to
their "Please may I go out?" and away they scrambled to prepare for
Martin a sumptuous banquet. This, Tom had insisted on, for he was
in great delight on the occasion; the reason of which delight must
be expounded. The fact was that this was the first attempt at a
friendship of his own which Arthur had made, and Tom hailed it as a
grand step. The ease with which he himself became hail-fellow-well-met
with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty friendships a
half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes angry at Arthur's
reserve and loneliness. True, Arthur was always pleasant, and even
jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt
that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum associated
with others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in a
wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility; and
though he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear to himself, yet
somehow he knew that this responsibility, this trust which he had
taken on him without thinking about it, head-over-heels in fact, was
the centre and turning-point of his school-life, that which was to
make him or mar him; his appointed work and trial for the time being.
And Tom was becoming a new boy, though with frequent tumbles in the
dirt and perpetual hard battle with himself, and was daily growing
in manfulness and thoughtfulness, as every high-couraged and
well-principled boy must, when he finds himself for the first time
consciously at grips w