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CHAPTER I

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

They--that is, the London-and-the-south-thereof contingent of the Hivite House at Grandwich--always celebrated the first morning of the holidays by breakfasting together at the Imperial Hotel at Oakleigh, as a preliminary to catching the nine-fifty-two.

A certain stateliness--not to say pomp--distinguished the function. Negotiations for the provision of the feast were opened at an early date--usually about half-term--the first step taking the form of a dignified but ungrammatical communication, cast in that most intricate and treacherous of moulds, the third person, to the proprietor of the hotel, intimating, after compliments, that Mr. Rumbold (major), Hivite House, Grandwich School, would be much obliged if our party could be supplied with breakfast, and you usually do it for half-a-crown as there are a lot of us, and if you don't we shall probably go to the George, and as the party wishes to catch the train Mr. Rumbold would be obliged if you can give it to me punctually.

To this mine host would reply with a most gratifying typewritten document addressed to--Rumbold, Esq.,--a form of address which never fails to please so long as your parents and other adult correspondents persist in designating you "Master,"--expressing the utmost willingness to provide breakfast for Mr. Rumbold's party at two-and-sixpence per head (which, by the way, was the normal charge), and concluding with a tactfully-worded request for information (inadvertently omitted from Mr. Rumbold's original communication) upon the following points:--

(1) The date of the feast.

(2) The number of young gentlemen likely to be present.

(3) The hour of the train which they propose to catch.

During the second half-term Mr. Rumbold's leisure would be pleasantly occupied in recruiting the breakfast-party and communicating its numbers and requirements, intermittently and piecemeal, together with searching enquiries re kidneys and ultimatums on the subject of scrambled eggs, to the rapidly ageing proprietor of the Imperial Hotel.

On the joyous morning of departure a dozen emancipated Helots, all glorious in bowler hats and coloured ties which atoned at a bound for thirteen weeks of statutory headgear and subfusc. haberdashery, descended upon the Imperial Hotel and sat down with intense but businesslike cheerfulness to the half-crown breakfast. On these occasions distinctions of caste were disregarded. Fag and prefect sat side by side. Brothers who had religiously cut one another throughout the term were reunited, even indulging in Christian names. Gentlemen who had fought to a finish behind the fives-court every alternate Wednesday afternoon since term began, took sweet counsel together upon the respective merits of Egyptian and Turkish cigarettes.

On the particular occasion with which we are concerned--a crisp morning in December--the party numbered twelve. It is not necessary to describe them in detail, for ten of them make their appearance, in this narrative, at any rate, for the first and last time. Let it suffice to say that Mr. Rumbold major sat at the head of the table and Mr. Rumbold minor at the foot, Mr. Rumbold tertius occupying a position about halfway down. Among others present might have been noticed (as the little society papers say) Mr. "Balmy" Coke, Mr. "Oaf" Sandiford, Mr. "Buggy" Reid, Mr. "Slimy" Green, Mr. "Lummy" Law, and Mr. "Adenoid" Smith. More notable figures were Messrs. "Spangle" Jerningham and "Tiny" Carmyle--lesser luminaries than Rumbold himself, but shining lights in the athletic firmament for all that.

One place only was vacant. The company, in accordance with what is probably the most rigorous social code in existence--schoolboy etiquette--had divided itself into two groups. The first, consisting of those whose right to a place at the head of the table was unquestioned, settled down at once with loud and confident anticipations of enjoyment. The remainder followed their example with more diffidence, beginning at the foot of the table and extending coyly upwards, those whose claim to a place above the salt was beginning to be more than considerable punctiliously taking the lowest places in order to escape the dread stigma of "side." Thus, by reason of the forces of mutual repulsion, a gap occurred in the very middle of the table, between a nervous little boy in spectacles, one Buggy Reid, and the magnificent Mr. Jerningham, Secretary of the Fifteen and the best racquets-player in the school.

"One short!" announced Rumbold. "Who is it?"

There was a general counting of heads. Mr. Reid timidly offered information.

"I think it is The Freak," he said.

There was a general laugh.

"Wonder what he's up to now," mused Mr. Jerningham. "You ought to know, Rummy. Your fag, is n't he?"

"I gave him the bag two terms ago," replied the great man contentedly. "Tiny has him now."

He turned to another of the seniors--a long-legged youth with a subdued manner.

"Still got him, Tiny?"

"Yes," said Mr. Carmyle gloomily, "I have still got him. It's a hard life, though."

"I know," said Rumbold sympathetically. "Does he cross-question you about the photographs on your mantelpiece?"

"Yes," said Carmyle. "He spoke very favourably of my youngest sister. Showed me a photograph of his own, and asked me to come and stay with them in the holidays. Said he thought I would have much in common with his father."

There was general merriment at this, for Mr. Carmyle was patriarchal, both in appearance and habits. But it did nothing to soothe the nerves of The Freak himself, who happened at the moment to be standing shyly upon one leg outside the door, endeavouring to summon up sufficient courage to walk in.

He was a small sandy-haired boy with shrewd blue eyes and a most disarming smile, and he belonged to a not uncommon and distinctly unlucky class. There are boys who are shy and who look shy. Such are usually left to themselves, and gradually attain to confidence. There are boys who are bumptious and behave bumptiously. Such are usually put through a brief disciplinary course by their friends, and ultimately achieve respectability. And there are boys who are shy, but who, through sheer self-consciousness and a desire to conceal their shyness, behave bumptiously. The way of such is hard. Public School disciplinary methods do not discriminate between the sheep and the goats. Variations from the normal, whether voluntary or involuntary, are all corrected by the same methods. Unconventionality of every kind is rebuked by stern moralists who have been through the mill themselves, and are convinced that it would be ungenerous to deprive the succeeding generation of the benefits which have produced such brilliant results in their own case.

The Freak--Master Richard Mainwaring--entered the school-world unfairly handicapped. He had never been from home before. He was an only son, and had had few companions but his parents. Consequently he was addicted to language and phraseology which, though meet and fitting upon the lips of elderly gentlemen, sounded ineffably pedantic upon those of an unkempt fag of fourteen. Finally, he was shy and sensitive, yet quite unable to indicate that characteristic by a retiring demeanour.

Life at school, then, did not begin too easily for him. He was naturally of a chirpy and confiding disposition, and the more nervous he felt the more chirpy and confiding he became. He had no instincts, either, upon the subject of caste. Instead of confining himself to his own impossible order of pariahs, he attempted to fraternise with any boy who interested him. He addressed great personages by their pet names; he invited high potentates to come and partake of refreshment at his expense. Now, promiscuous bonhomie in new boys is not usually encouraged in the great schools of England, and all the ponderous and relentless machinery available for the purpose was set in motion to impress this truth upon the over-demonstrative Freak. Most of us know this mighty engine. Under its operations many sensitive little boys crumple up into furtive and apathetic nonentities. Others grow into licensed buffoons, battening upon their own shame, cadging for cheap applause, thinking always of things to say and to do which will make fellows laugh. The Freak did neither. He remained obstinately and resolutely a Freak. If chidden for eccentricity he answered back, sometimes too effectively, and suffered. But he never gave in. At last, finding that he apparently feared no one,--though really this was far from being the case: his most audacious flights were as often as not inspired by sheer nervous excitement,--the world in which he moved decided to tolerate him, and finally ended by extending towards him a sort of amused respect.

All this time we have left our friend standing outside the door. Presently, drawing a deep breath, he entered, jauntily enough.

"Hallo, Freak, where have you been?" enquired Mr. Rumbold.

"I felt constrained," replied The Freak, as one old gentleman to another, "to return to the House upon an errand of reparation."

A full half of the company present were blankly ignorant as to the meaning of the word "reparation," so they giggled contentedly and decided that The Freak was in good form this morning.

"What was the trouble?" asked Jerningham.

"As I was counting my change in the cab," explained The Freak, "I found that I was a penny short. (I'll have fried sole, and then bacon-and-eggs, please. And chocolate.)"

"Shylock!" commented the humorous Mr. Jerningham.

The Freak hastened to explain.

"It was the only penny I had," he said: "that was why I missed it. The rest was silver. I saw what had happened: I had given a penny to Seagrave by mistake, instead of half-a-crown."

The thought of Mr. Seagrave, the stern and awful butler of the Hivite House, incredulously contemplating a solitary copper in his palm, what time the unconscious Freak drove away two-and-fivepence to the good, tickled the company greatly, and the narrator had made considerable inroads upon the fried sole before he was called upon to continue.

"What did you do?" asked Rumbold.

"I drove back and apologised, and gave him two-and-fivepence," said The Freak simply.

"Was he shirty about it?"

"No; he did n't seem at all surprised," was the rather naïve reply.

There was another laugh at this, and Jerningham observed:--

"Freak, you are the limit."

"I may be the limit," countered The Freak hotly,--ordinary chaff he could endure, but Mr. Jerningham had more than once exceeded the bounds of recognised fag-baiting that term,--"but I am wearing my own shirt, Jerningham, and not one of Carmyle's!"

There was a roar at this unexpected riposte, for Jerningham, though a dandy of the most ambitious type, was notoriously addicted to borrowed plumage, and the cubicle of the easy-going Carmyle was next his own.

"You will be booted for that afterwards, my lad," announced the discomfited wearer of Mr. Carmyle's shirt.

The Freak surveyed his tormentor thoughtfully. After all, he was safe from reprisals for nearly five weeks. He therefore replied, deliberately and pedantically:--

"I do not dispute the probability of the occurrence. But that won't prevent you," he added, reverting to the vernacular, "from feeling jolly well scored off, all the same. And"--after a brief interval to allow this psychological point full play--"mind you send the shirt back to Carmyle. I have enough trouble looking after his things as it is. Get it washed, and then carefully dis--"

"Carefully what?" enquired Mr. Jerningham, beginning to push back his chair.

The Freak, who had intended to say "disinfected," decided not to endanger his clean collar, carefully brushed hair, and other appurtenances of the homeward-bound.

--"And carefully despatched per Parcels Post," he concluded sweetly. "Hello, you fellows--finished?"

"Yes: buck up!" commanded Rumbold.

The feast ended in traditional fashion. No bill was ever asked for or presented upon these occasions. Rumbold major merely took the sugar-basin and, having emptied it of its contents, placed therein the sum of two-and-nine-pence--half-a-crown for his breakfast and threepence for the waiters. The bowl was then sent round the table in the manner of an offertory plate, and the resulting collection was handed without ceremony to the fat head-waiter, who received it with a stately bow and a few well-chosen and long-familiar phrases upon the subject of a good holiday and a Merry Christmas; after which the members of the party dispersed to the railway station and went their several ways.

It was characteristic of The Freak that he hung behind at the last moment, for the purpose of handing a furtive shilling to the inarticulate Teuton who had assisted in dispensing breakfast, and whose underfed appearance had roused beneath the comfortably distended waistcoat of our altruistic friend certain suspicions, not altogether unfounded, as to the principle upon which head-waiters share tips with their subordinates.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST FREAK

My name is Carmyle. Possibly you may have noticed it in the previous chapter, among the list of those present at the breakfast at the Imperial. It was not a particularly hilarious meal for me, for I was leaving Grandwich for good that morning; and the schoolboy bids farewell to this, the first chapter of his life, with a ceremony--not to say solemnity--sadly at variance with the cheerfulness or indifference with which he sometimes turns the page at the close of later epochs.

I parted from the main body of Hivites at Peterborough, for they were bound for London, while I had to transfer my person and effects to the care of the Great Eastern Railway for conveyance to my home in Essex.

At Ely, a little tired of the company and conversation of five East Anglian farmers, who occupied more than their fair share of room and conducted an extremely dull technical conversation with quite surprising heat and vehemence over my head and across my waistcoat, I walked up the platform in search of a little more cubic space. At the very front of the train I found a third-class compartment containing only a single occupant.

"Hallo, Freak!" I said. "I thought you were bound for London."

"Your surmise," replied my late fag, "is correct. But there was a slight mishap at Peterborough."

"You got left behind?"

"Practically, yes. In point of fact, I was bunged out of the train by Spangle Jerningham."

"Why?"

"He bought some bananas, and I warned him not to. I said some people had been prosecuted only last week for eating fruit in a railway carriage."

"Silly young idiot!" I replied, falling into the trap, even as Jerningham had done. "Why--"

"But they were," persisted The Freak. "They were caught sucking dates--off their tickets! And as there was no train on for two hours," he concluded, neatly dodging "The Strand Magazine," "I decided to come round this way. We get to Liverpool Street by four. How far are you going?"

I told him, and the train resumed its journey through the fenland.

The next stop was Cambridge, where The Freak, suddenly remembering that the railway ticket in his possession was entirely useless for his present purpose, got out to buy another. I hung out of the carriage window, wondering which of the Colleges the tall yellow-brick building just outside the station might be, and gazing reverentially upon a group of three young men in tweed jackets and flannel trousers, who had temporarily torn themselves from the pursuit of knowledge for the purpose of bidding farewell to the members of a theatrical touring company.

Presently our engine and brake-van removed themselves to a place of refreshment down the line; whereupon a somnolent horse of mountainous aspect, which had been meekly standing by, attached by a trace to an empty third-class coach, took advantage of their absence to tow its burden to the front of our train and leave it there, like a foundling on a doorstep, subsequently departing in search of further practical jokes.

With that instinctive shrinking from publicity which marks the professions of literature, art, and the drama, each of the compartments of the third-class coach bore a label, printed in three colours, announcing that this accommodation was reserved for Mr. Wilton Spurge's Number One Company--I have always desired to meet a Number Two Company, but have never succeeded--in "The Sign of the Cross," proceeding from Cambridge to Liverpool Street, for Walthamstow.

The majority of Mr. Wilton Spurge's followers took their seats at once; but three young ladies, hugging boxes of chocolate, remained in affectionate conversation with the undergraduates upon the platform. Most of the gentlemen of the company still lingered in the refreshment-room. Suddenly there was a gentle tremor throughout the train, as the engine and brake-van reluctantly backed themselves into a position of contact. A whistle blew, and a white flag fluttered far down the platform.

"There's no hurry," observed The Freak, who had returned from the ticket office and was now surveying the passing show with his head thrust out of the window under my arm. "That white flag only means that the Westinghouse brake is working all right."

But the female mind takes no account of technical trifles, least of all upon a railway journey. To a woman flags and whistles all spell panic. At the first blast, a lady (whom I took to be the Empress Poppeia) hastily shepherded every one within reach into the train, and then directed a piercing summons in the direction of the refreshment-room. She was seconded by an irregular but impressive chorus of admonition upon the perils of delay, led by Mercia in person and supported by a bevy of Christian Martyrs and Roman Dancing-Girls.

The whistle sounded again, and a second flag fluttered--a green one this time. There was a concerted shriek from the locomotive and the ladies, followed by a commotion at the door of the refreshment-room, from which eftsoons the Emperor Nero, bearing a bag of buns and a copy of "The Era," shot hastily forth. He was closely followed by Marcus Superbus, running rapidly and carrying two bottles of stout. Three Roman Patricians with their mouths full, together with a Father of the Early Church clinging to a half-consumed pork-pie, brought up the rear.

Deeply interested in the progress of the race, and speculating eagerly as to whether Pagan or Christian would secure the corner-seats, The Freak and I failed for the moment to note that our own compartment was in danger of invasion. But resistance was vain. At the very last moment the door was wrenched open by the guard, and four human beings were projected into our company just as the train began to move. A handbag and two paper parcels hurtled through the air after them.

"Sorry to hurry you, Mr. Welwyn, sir," said the guard, standing on the footboard and addressing the leader of the party through the window, "but we are behind time as it is, with that theatrical lot."

"My fault entirely, guard," replied Mr. Welwyn graciously. He was a handsome scholarly man of about forty. I put him down as a University Don of the best type--possibly one of the Tutors of a great college. "We should have come earlier. And--er"--here followed the indeterminate mumble and sleight-of-hand performance which accompany the bestowal of the British tip--"thank you for your trouble."

"Thank you, sir," replied the gratified menial, and disappeared into space with half-a-crown in his palm. Evidently Mr. Welwyn was a man of substance as well as consequence.

"You did n't ought to have given him so much, father dear!"

This just but ungrammatical observation emanated from the female head of the party; and despite an innate disinclination to risk catching the eye of strangers in public, I turned and inspected the speaker. From her style of address it was plain that she was either wife or daughter to Mr. Welwyn. Daughter she probably was not, for she must have been quite thirty; and therefore by a process of exhaustion I was led to the reluctant conclusion that she was his wife. I say reluctant, for it seemed incredible that a suave polished academic gentleman could be mated with a lady:--

(1) Who would initiate a domestic discussion in the presence of strangers.

(2) Whose syntax was shaky.

(3) Who wore a crimson blouse, with vermilion feathers in her hat.

But it was so. Mr. Welwyn waved a hand deprecatingly.

"One has one's position to consider, dear," he said. "Besides, these poor fellows are not overpaid, I fear, by their employers."

At this, a grim contraction flitted for a moment over Mrs. Welwyn's florid good-tempered features, and I saw suitable retorts crowding to her lips. But that admirable and exceptional woman--as in later days she proved herself over and over again to be--said nothing. Instead, she smiled indulgently upon her extravagant husband, as upon a child of the largest possible growth, and accepted from him with nothing more than a comical little sigh two magazines which had cost sixpence each.

I now had time to inspect the other two members of the party. They were children. One was a little boy--a vulgar, overdressed, plebian, open-mouthed little boy--and I was not in the least surprised a moment later to hear his mother address him as "Percy." (It had to be either "Percy" or "Douglas.") He was dressed in a tight and rather dusty suit of velveteen, with a crumpled lace collar and a plush jockey-cap. He looked about seven years old, wore curls down to his shoulders, and extracted intermittent nourishment from a long and glutinous stick of licorice.

The other was a girl--one of the prettiest little girls I have ever seen. I was not--and am not--an expert on children's ages, but I put her down as four years old. She was a plump and well-proportioned child, with an abundance of brown hair, solemn grey eyes, and a friendly smile. She sat curled up on the seat, leaning her head against her mother's arm, an oasis of contentment and neatness in that dusty railway carriage; and I felt dimly conscious that in due time I should like to possess a little girl of my own like that.

At present she was engaged in industriously staring The Freak out of countenance.

The Freak, not at all embarrassed, smiled back at her. Miss Welwyn broke into an unmaidenly chuckle, and her father put down "The Morning Post."

"Why this hilarity, my daughter?" he enquired.

The little girl, who was apparently accustomed to academically long words, indicated The Freak with a little nod of her head.

"I like that boy," she said frankly. "Not the other. Too big!"

"Baby dearie, don't talk so!" exclaimed Mrs. Welwyn, highly scandalised.

"I apologise for my daughter's lack of reserve--and discrimination," said Mr. Welwyn to me, courteously. "She will not be so sincere and unaffected in twenty years' time, I am afraid. Are you gentlemen going home for the holidays?"

I entered into conversation with him, in the course of which I learned that he was a member of the University, off on vacation. He did not tell me his College.

"Do you get long holi--vacations, sir, at Cambridge?" I asked. "When do you have to be back?"

Youth is not usually observant, but on this occasion even my untutored faculties informed me that Mr. Welwyn was looking suddenly older.

"I am not going back," he said briefly. Then he smiled, a little mechanically, and initiated a discussion on compound locomotives.

Presently his attention was caught by some occurrence at the other end of the compartment. He laughed.

"My daughter appears to be pressing her companionship upon your friend with a distressing lack of modesty," he said.

I turned. The Freak had installed his admirer in the corner-seat beside him, and, having found paper and pencil, was engaged in turning out masterpieces of art at her behest. With a flat suitcase for a desk, he was executing--so far as the Great Eastern Railway would permit him--a portrait of Miss Welwyn herself; his model, pleasantly thrilled, affectionately clasping one of his arms in both of hers and breathing heavily through her small nose, which she held about six inches from the paper.

Finally the likeness was completed and presented.

"Now draw a cow," said Miss Welwyn immediately.

The Freak meekly set to work again.

Then came the inevitable question.

"What's her name?"

The artist considered.

"Sylvia," he said at length. Sylvia, I knew, was the name of his sister.

"Not like that name!" said the child, more prophetically than she knew.

The Freak apologised and suggested Mary Ann, which so pleased his patroness that she immediately lodged an order for twelve more cows. The artist executed the commission with unflagging zeal and care, Miss Welwyn following every stroke of the pencil with critical interest and numbering off the animals as they were created.

About this time Master Percy Welwyn, who had fallen into a fitful slumber, woke up and loudly expressed a desire for a commodity which he described as "kike." His mother supplied his needs from a string-bag. Refreshed and appeased, he slept anew.

Meanwhile the herd of cows had been completed, and The Freak was, immediately set to work to find names for each. The appellation Mary Ann had established a fatal precedent, for The Freak's employer ruthlessly demanded a double title for each of Mary Ann's successors. Appealed to for a personal contribution, she shook her small head firmly: to her, evidently, in common with the rest of her sex, destructive criticism of male endeavour was woman's true sphere in life. But when the despairing Freak, after submitting Mabel-Maud, Emily-Kate, Elizabeth-Jane, and Maria-Theresa, made a second pathetic appeal for assistance, the lady so far relented as to suggest "Seener Angler"--a form of address which, though neither bovine nor feminine, seemed to me to come naturally enough from the daughter of a Don, but caused Mr. and Mrs. Welwyn to exchange glances.

At last the tale was completed,--I think the last cow was christened "Bishop's Stortford," through which station we were passing at the moment,--and the exhausted Freak smilingly laid down his pencil. But no one who has ever embarked upon that most comprehensive and interminable of enterprises, the entertainment of a child, will be surprised to hear that Miss Welwyn now laid a pudgy fore-finger upon the first cow, and enquired:--

"Where that cow going?"

"Cambridge," answered The Freak after consideration.

"Next one?"

"London."

"Next one?"

Freak thought again.

"Grandwich," he said.

The round face puckered.

"Not like it. Anuvver place!"

"You think of one," said The Freak boldly.

The small despot promptly named a locality which sounded like "Tumpiton," and passed on pitilessly to the next cow.

"Where that one going?" she enquired.

"It is n't going: it's coming back," replied The Freak, rather ingeniously.

Strange to say, this answer appeared to satisfy the hitherto insatiable infant, and the game was abruptly abandoned. Picking up The Freak's pencil, Miss Welwyn projected a seraphic smile upon its owner.

"You give this to Tilly?" she enquired, in a voice which most men know.

"Rather."

"Tilly, ducky, don't act so greedy," came the inevitable maternal correction. "Give back the young gentleman--"

"It's all right," said The Freak awkwardly. "I don't want it, really."

"But--"

There came a shriek from the engine, and the train slowed down.

"Is this where they collect tickets, father?" enquired Mrs. Welwyn, breaking off suddenly.

Mr. Welwyn nodded, and his wife rather hurriedly plucked her daughter from her seat beside The Freak and transferred her to her own lap, to that damsel's unfeigned dolour.

"Sit on mother's knee just now, dearie," urged Mrs. Welwyn--"just for a minute or two!"

Miss Welwyn, who appeared to be a biddable infant, settled down without further objection. A moment later the train stopped and the carriage door was thrown open.

"Tickets, please!"

Mr. Welwyn and I sat next the door, and I accordingly submitted my ticket for inspection. It was approved and returned to me by the collector, an austere person with what Charles Surface once described as "a damned disinheriting countenance."

"Change next stop," he remarked. "Yours, sir?"

Mr. Welwyn handed him three tickets. The collector appeared to count them. Then his gloomy gaze fell upon the unconscious Miss Welwyn, who from the safe harbourage of her mother's arms was endeavouring to administer to him what is technically known, I believe, as The Glad Eye.

"Have you a ticket for that child, madam?" he enquired. "Too old to be carried."

Mrs. Welwyn looked helplessly at her husband, who replied for her.

"Yes, surely. Did n't I give it to you, my man?"

"No, sir," said the collector dryly; "you did not."

Mr. Welwyn began to feel in his pockets.

"That is uncommonly stupid of me," he said. "I must have it somewhere. I thought I put them all in one pocket."

He pursued his researches further, and the collector waited grimly. I looked at Mrs. Welwyn. She was an honest woman, and a fleeting glance at her face informed me that the search for this particular ticket was to be of a purely academic description.

"I must trouble you," began the man, "for--"

"It must be somewhere!" persisted Mr. Welwyn, with unruffled cheerfulness. "Perhaps I dropped it on the floor."

"Let me look!"

Next moment The Freak, who had been a silent spectator of the scene, dropped upon his knees and dived under the seat. The collector, obviously sceptical, fidgeted impatiently and stepped back on to the platform, as if to look for an inspector. I saw an appealing glance pass from Mrs. Welwyn to her husband. He smiled back airily, and I realised that probably this comedy had been played once or twice before.

The collector reappeared.

"The fare," he began briskly, "is--"

"Here's the ticket," announced a muffled voice from beneath the seat, and The Freak, crimson and dusty, emerged from the depths flourishing a green pasteboard slip.

The collector took it from his hand and examined it carefully.

"All right," he snapped. "Now your own, sir."

The Freak dutifully complied. At the sight of his ticket the collector's morose countenance lightened almost to the point of geniality. He was not to go empty away after all.

"Great Northern ticket. Not available on this line," he announced.

"It's all right, old man," explained my fag affably. "I changed from the Great Northern at Peterborough. This line of yours is so much jollier," he added soothingly.

"Six-and-fourpence," said the collector.

The Freak, who was well endowed with pocket-money even at the end of term, complied with the utmost cheerfulness; asked for a receipt; expressed an earnest hope that the collector's real state of health belied his appearance; and resumed his corner-seat with a friendly nod of farewell.

Two minutes later this curious episode was at an end, and the train was swinging on its way to London. Mrs. Welwyn, looking puzzled and ashamed, sat silently in her corner; Mr. Welwyn, who was not the man to question the workings of Providence when Providence worked the right way, hummed a cheerful little tune in his. The deplorable child Percy slept. The Freak, with a scarlet face, industriously perused a newspaper.

As for Miss Tilly Welwyn, she sat happily upon a suitcase on the floor, still engaged in making unmaidenly eyes at the quixotic young gentleman who had just acted, not for the last time in his life, as her banker.