y were too good to be thrown away. There was nothing
about it to be ashamed of, and the made-over suit was neat enough,
though a little awkwardly cut. A couple of years earlier, Keith would
have hailed it with delight. Now the wearing of it seemed worse than
going about naked. He thought that every one noticed the suit and knew
that it was not really meant for him.

He read contempt in every glance, and by degrees he developed a temper
that was checked only by the humiliating consciousness of his physical
inferiority. After nearly five years in school, he was still one of the
smallest boys in height and bodily development, and neither gymnastics
nor the military drill that became compulsory in the sixth grade had the
slightest effect on him. And, of course, he suffered the more from it
because he ascribed his lack of stature and muscle to what he had now
begun to think of as his own moral weakness.

A petty quarrel one day brought on another fight with Bauer, and this
time right in the class room. They rolled around on the floor between
the desks and separated only when some one cried out that Booklund was
coming. Keith was thoroughly aware of the fact that his classmates
regarded their behaviour as inexcusably undignified in pupils of the
Lower Sixth, but contrary to custom, he didn't care very much. What
almost made him cry was that the thought that at the moment of
separation Bauer once more was on top of him--just as when their first
fight came to an end five years earlier. And then Keith was brought
still nearer to tears by his disgusted realization of that infantile
tendency to cry in every moment of unusual strain.

But, of course, how could he expect anything else?

His whole bearing changed gradually. The gay forwardness that had caused
Dally to make fun of him--and like him, perhaps--was quite gone, but
gone, too, was the shyness that always had run side by side with it. His
most frequent mood was one of irritable rebellion, and in between he
would have spells of sulkiness that estranged the teachers and surprised
himself in his more wholesome moods. He snarled to his mother, and he
would have done so to his father if he had only dared.

The school seemed sheer torture much of the time, and all its
objectionable features seemed to centre in the Latin. His hatred of that
subject approached an obsession. There was no doubt that Lector Booklund
could feel it, and every day he watched Keith with more undisguis