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>sorry.”

 

“Where is the bag?”

 

“On the platform at the last station. It hit a porter.”

 

Against his will, for he wished to treat the matter with fitting

solemnity, Mike grinned at the recollection. The look on Porter

Robinson’s face as the bag took him in the small of the back had been

funny, though not intentionally so.

 

The bereaved owner disapproved of this levity; and said as much.

 

“Don’t grin, you little beast,” he shouted. “There’s nothing to

laugh at. You go chucking bags that don’t belong to you out of the

window, and then you have the frightful cheek to grin about it.”

 

“It wasn’t that,” said Mike hurriedly. “Only the porter looked awfully

funny when it hit him.”

 

“Dash the porter! What’s going to happen about my bag? I can’t get out

for half a second to buy a magazine without your flinging my things

about the platform. What you want is a frightful kicking.”

 

The situation was becoming difficult. But fortunately at this moment

the train stopped once again; and, looking out of the window, Mike saw

a board with East Wobsley upon it in large letters. A moment later

Bob’s head appeared in the doorway.

 

“Hullo, there you are,” said Bob.

 

His eye fell upon Mike’s companion.

 

“Hullo, Gazeka!” he exclaimed. “Where did you spring from? Do you know

my brother? He’s coming to Wrykyn this term. By the way, rather lucky

you’ve met. He’s in your house. Firby-Smith’s head of Wain’s, Mike.”

 

Mike gathered that Gazeka and Firby-Smith were one and the same

person. He grinned again. Firby-Smith continued to look ruffled,

though not aggressive.

 

“Oh, are you in Wain’s?” he said.

 

“I say, Bob,” said Mike, “I’ve made rather an ass of myself.”

 

“Naturally.”

 

“I mean, what happened was this. I chucked Firby-Smith’s portmanteau

out of the window, thinking he’d got out, only he hadn’t really, and

it’s at a station miles back.”

 

“You’re a bit of a rotter, aren’t you? Had it got your name and

address on it, Gazeka?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Oh, then it’s certain to be all right. It’s bound to turn up some

time. They’ll send it on by the next train, and you’ll get it either

to-night or to-morrow.”

 

“Frightful nuisance, all the same. Lots of things in it I wanted.”

 

“Oh, never mind, it’s all right. I say, what have you been doing in

the holidays? I didn’t know you lived on this line at all.”

 

From this point onwards Mike was out of the conversation altogether.

Bob and Firby-Smith talked of Wrykyn, discussing events of the

previous term of which Mike had never heard. Names came into their

conversation which were entirely new to him. He realised that school

politics were being talked, and that contributions from him to the

dialogue were not required. He took up his magazine again, listening

the while. They were discussing Wain’s now. The name Wyatt cropped up

with some frequency. Wyatt was apparently something of a character.

Mention was made of rows in which he had played a part in the past.

 

“It must be pretty rotten for him,” said Bob. “He and Wain never get

on very well, and yet they have to be together, holidays as well as

term. Pretty bad having a step-father at all—I shouldn’t care to—and

when your housemaster and your step-father are the same man, it’s a

bit thick.”

 

“Frightful,” agreed Firby-Smith.

 

“I swear, if I were in Wyatt’s place, I should rot about like

anything. It isn’t as if he’d anything to look forward to when he

leaves. He told me last term that Wain had got a nomination for him in

some beastly bank, and that he was going into it directly after the

end of this term. Rather rough on a chap like Wyatt. Good cricketer

and footballer, I mean, and all that sort of thing. It’s just the sort

of life he’ll hate most. Hullo, here we are.”

 

Mike looked out of the window. It was Wrykyn at last.

CHAPTER III

MIKE FINDS A FRIENDLY NATIVE

 

Mike was surprised to find, on alighting, that the platform was

entirely free from Wrykynians. In all the stories he had read the

whole school came back by the same train, and, having smashed in one

another’s hats and chaffed the porters, made their way to the school

buildings in a solid column. But here they were alone.

 

A remark of Bob’s to Firby-Smith explained this. “Can’t make out why

none of the fellows came back by this train,” he said. “Heaps of them

must come by this line, and it’s the only Christian train they run,”

 

“Don’t want to get here before the last minute they can possibly

manage. Silly idea. I suppose they think there’d be nothing to do.”

 

“What shall we do?” said Bob. “Come and have some tea at

Cook’s?”

 

“All right.”

 

Bob looked at Mike. There was no disguising the fact that he would be

in the way; but how convey this fact delicately to him?

 

“Look here, Mike,” he said, with a happy inspiration, “Firby-Smith and

I are just going to get some tea. I think you’d better nip up to the

school. Probably Wain will want to see you, and tell you all about

things, which is your dorm. and so on. See you later,” he concluded

airily. “Any one’ll tell you the way to the school. Go straight on.

They’ll send your luggage on later. So long.” And his sole prop in

this world of strangers departed, leaving him to find his way for

himself.

 

There is no subject on which opinions differ so widely as this matter

of finding the way to a place. To the man who knows, it is simplicity

itself. Probably he really does imagine that he goes straight on,

ignoring the fact that for him the choice of three roads, all more or

less straight, has no perplexities. The man who does not know feels as

if he were in a maze.

 

Mike started out boldly, and lost his way. Go in which direction he

would, he always seemed to arrive at a square with a fountain and an

equestrian statue in its centre. On the fourth repetition of this feat

he stopped in a disheartened way, and looked about him. He was

beginning to feel bitter towards Bob. The man might at least have

shown him where to get some tea.

 

At this moment a ray of hope shone through the gloom. Crossing the

square was a short, thick-set figure clad in grey flannel trousers, a

blue blazer, and a straw hat with a coloured band. Plainly a

Wrykynian. Mike made for him.

 

“Can you tell me the way to the school, please,” he said.

 

“Oh, you’re going to the school,” said the other. He had a pleasant,

square-jawed face, reminiscent of a good-tempered bull-dog, and a pair

of very deep-set grey eyes which somehow put Mike at his ease. There

was something singularly cool and genial about them. He felt that they

saw the humour in things, and that their owner was a person who liked

most people and whom most people liked.

 

“You look rather lost,” said the stranger. “Been hunting for it long?”

 

“Yes,” said Mike.

 

“Which house do you want?”

 

“Wain’s.”

 

“Wain’s? Then you’ve come to the right man this time. What I don’t

know about Wain’s isn’t worth knowing.”

 

“Are you there, too?”

 

“Am I not! Term and holidays. There’s no close season for me.”

 

“Oh, are you Wyatt, then?” asked Mike.

 

“Hullo, this is fame. How did you know my name, as the ass in the

detective story always says to the detective, who’s seen it in the

lining of his hat? Who’s been talking about me?”

 

“I heard my brother saying something about you in the train.”

 

“Who’s your brother?”

 

“Jackson. He’s in Donaldson’s.”

 

“I know. A stout fellow. So you’re the newest make of Jackson, latest

model, with all the modern improvements? Are there any more of you?”

 

“Not brothers,” said Mike.

 

“Pity. You can’t quite raise a team, then? Are you a sort of young

Tyldesley, too?”

 

“I played a bit at my last school. Only a private school, you know,”

added Mike modestly.

 

“Make any runs? What was your best score?”

 

“Hundred and twenty-three,” said Mike awkwardly. “It was only against

kids, you know.” He was in terror lest he should seem to be bragging.

 

“That’s pretty useful. Any more centuries?”

 

“Yes,” said Mike, shuffling.

 

“How many?”

 

“Seven altogether. You know, it was really awfully rotten bowling. And

I was a good bit bigger than most of the chaps there. And my pater

always has a pro. down in the Easter holidays, which gave me a bit of

an advantage.”

 

“All the same, seven centuries isn’t so dusty against any bowling. We

shall want some batting in the house this term. Look here, I was just

going to have some tea. You come along, too.”

 

“Oh, thanks awfully,” said Mike. “My brother and Firby-Smith have gone

to a place called Cook’s.”

 

“The old Gazeka? I didn’t know he lived in your part of the world.

He’s head of Wain’s.”

 

“Yes, I know,” said Mike. “Why is he called Gazeka?” he asked after a

pause.

 

“Don’t you think he looks like one? What did you think of him?”

 

“I didn’t speak to him much,” said Mike cautiously. It is always

delicate work answering a question like this unless one has some sort

of an inkling as to the views of the questioner.

 

“He’s all right,” said Wyatt, answering for himself. “He’s got a habit

of talking to one as if he were a prince of the blood dropping a

gracious word to one of the three Small-Heads at the Hippodrome, but

that’s his misfortune. We all have our troubles. That’s his. Let’s go

in here. It’s too far to sweat to Cook’s.”

 

It was about a mile from the tea-shop to the school. Mike’s first

impression on arriving at the school grounds was of his smallness and

insignificance. Everything looked so big—the buildings, the grounds,

everything. He felt out of the picture. He was glad that he had met

Wyatt. To make his entrance into this strange land alone would have

been more of an ordeal than he would have cared to face.

 

“That’s Wain’s,” said Wyatt, pointing to one of half a dozen large

houses which lined the road on the south side of the cricket field.

Mike followed his finger, and took in the size of his new home.

 

“I say, it’s jolly big,” he said. “How many fellows are there in it?”

 

“Thirty-one this term, I believe.”

 

“That’s more than there were at King-Hall’s.”

 

“What’s King-Hall’s?”

 

“The private school I was at. At Emsworth.”

 

Emsworth seemed very remote and unreal to him as he spoke.

 

They skirted the cricket field, walking along the path that divided

the two terraces. The Wrykyn playing-fields were formed of a series of

huge steps, cut out of the hill. At the top of the hill came the

school. On the first terrace was a sort of informal practice ground,

where, though no games were played on it, there was a good deal of

punting and drop-kicking in the winter and fielding-practice in the

summer. The next terrace was the biggest of all, and formed the first

eleven cricket ground, a beautiful piece of turf, a shade too narrow

for its length, bounded on the terrace side by a sharply sloping

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