ow periwinkles may be a
comfort, but what I shudder at is the idea of dirty linen. Not to have
a clean shirt every day! It is quite too awful to think of. I am sure
I wish you speedy and complete success, and that you may eat salt with
the Arabs, and put some on Daireh's tail. That is how the Nubians catch
their prisoners, Strachan."

"And when do you start?" asked Strachan, a great deal too much
interested to listen to Kavanagh's nonsense.

"On Wednesday," replied Harry, "that is why I cannot stop to-morrow to
benefit by your hospitality. I must go in the morning pretty early."

"I'm off to Berber early in the morning,
I'm off to Berber, a little while to stay,"

chanted the incorrigible Kavanagh, getting on to his feet. "Catchee
Dairy, or no catchee Dairy, Forsyth has got to see the old town of
Farnham, and walk home by road, and get there comfortably for dinner.
So come on. I am sure Forsyth must want to rest his tongue a bit and
give his eyes a turn."

They left the park, and went down into the town by the steps beneath the
palace; and so through the broad street with the restored houses, the
bank and others, the inhabitants of which ought to wear coifs and
pinners, knickerbockers and doublets, and where tall black hats should
be unknown; then into the main street, past the Workhouse, which has a
letter-box soliciting books and newspapers for the amusement of the
paupers, and so back to camp.

Each of the three recalled that Sunday walk often and often in after
years, with a pleasure which those who have formed school friendships,
and met those they had "conned" with after several, yet not too many,
years' absence, will understand. They talked no more of Forsyth's
adventurous journey, or the imminent examination lowering over Strachan
and Kavanagh. No, the future was banished from their thoughts, which
were full of the past. Their talk, indeed, on the way home, would have
been a terrible infliction upon an outsider, had one been of the
company.

"I say, do you remember Baum major?"

"Rather."

"Don't you remember when he thought he was sent up for good, and he
wasn't, and his face when he found out that old Williams had smelt his
jacket of tobacco smoke?"

"I remember!"

And then a roar of laughter, the joke being only known to the three, but
needing no further elucidation for them. For every period of every
public school has its jokes, which are no jokes to any human being
unconnected