ything out of the bag. Then I packed my best, which must have
been worse than anybody else's except Fred's, and when I had finished,
though the bag still bulged and was not a thing to be proud of, it did
not bulge so very badly; at any rate Fred said it would do, but when I
looked at him again I forgot entirely that I had intended to be angry
with him.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Nothing to speak of. I've had a cold and a headache, and just rotten
little things like that. Brighton will cure me," but he didn't speak
as if he cared whether it did or not.

"You've got to come to us directly that reading party is over or I
won't have this cheque, and if I don't take the cheque I shall be in an
awful hole," I said, for I can't lead up to things.

"I would very much rather not come," he answered.

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said, and then he got up and gave the bag a kick
which, landing on a bat, hurt his toe. "You're the best fellow in the
world, Godfrey, but you don't understand."

"There is something odd the matter with you, or you wouldn't say that.
We don't say things like that to each other."

"Won't you come down to Cornwall?"

"No, I won't."

"Is Ward going to stay with you?"

"My people have asked him."

"And is he going?"

"He seems to think he is. I told him the boat was rotten and the cob
fat, and that there was nothing on earth to do," I added most stupidly,
but I had no idea then that any one could really be troubled by things
which had never affected me in the least.

"And he is going all the same," Fred said, and he did not look a bit
more cheerful.

So I sat forward in my chair and talked to him. It does not matter
what I said, but I kept clear of Nina, and told him my people would be
desperately sick with him, which made him uncomfortable, because he and
my mother liked each other very much. I also told him that he was
treating me badly; but I soon had to drop that, because he did not seem
to think that it would make any difference how he behaved to me.
However, I stirred him up, and if ever a man wanted stirring up he did;
so at last he promised that he would come to us in September and stay
until the end of the vac, if he was wanted. I told him that if no one
else wanted him I always should; but this remark did not appear to
cheer him up at all, and I began to think he must be bilious. I know
that whenever I had a cold at one of my private schools, the wife of
the hea