Mr. Morton, the headmaster, believed in Hygiene and the Educational Value of Beauty. The classroom smelt vividly of carbolic. There was a large lithograph of "Love and Life" on the pure white wall and a pot of flowers on the high window-sill. Maps, blackboards and all other paraphernalia of learning were kept in merciful concealment.

Robert took possession of the desk nearest him and was at once ejected. Its rightful owner scowled darkly at him. At the next desk he tried to anchor himself, and there was a scuffle and a smothered exchange of blows, from which he escaped with a scraped shin and a strange, unfamiliar sense of being afraid. There was no fight in him. He didn't want to fight. He wanted to belong-to be one of the herd-and he knew dimly that he would first have to learn its laws and submit to its tortures. He tried to grin back when the titter, which seemed endemic, broke out afresh as he stumbled on his ignominious pilgrimage, but the unasked-for partition in their amusement seemed to exasperate them. They whispered things to one another. They commented on his clothes. He realized suddenly how poorly dressed he was. There was a patch on the knee of his trousers and a mended tear on his shiny jacket. His finger-nails weren't very clean. Christine had gone off too early to be sure that he had done them, and he had never thought much of that sort of thing. Now he was paralysed with shame. He could feel the tears strangling him.

Fortunately the desk in the far corner belonged to nobody. It was old and battered and covered with the undecipherable carvings of his predecessors, but at once he loved it. It was his. Its retired position seemed to offer him protection. He hid behind it, drawing a long, shuddering sigh of thankfulness.

The little dark man stood on the raised platform and surveyed them all. His expression was nearly a grimace; as though he had just swallowed a disagreeable medicine. He pursed his lips and held tight to the lapels of his coat, his piercing yet distressful eyes blinking rapidly behind their glasses with a kind of nervous malice.

"Well, my delightful and learned young friends--"

The class wilted in anticipation. But before he spoke again the door opened and they rose thankfully with a shuffle of feet and surreptitious clatter of desks. The clergyman waved to them. If the little dark man was like a blackbird, captive and resentful, the newcomer was like a meagre and somewhat fluttered hen. His hands and wrists were long and yellow and sinewy. He wore no cuffs, but one could see the beginnings of his Jaeger undervest under the black sleeve. He rubbed his chin or smoothed the back of his small head almost ceaselessly.

"You can sit down, boys. One moment, Mr. Ricardo, one moment only--"

He spoke in an undertone. Robert knew it was about him. They both looked in his direction. The little man jerked his head.

"Robert Stonehouse."

He sat motionless, trying to hide from them. But it was of no good. The clergyman made an elevating gesture, and he rose automatically as though he were tied to that gentleman's hand by an invisible string. The desk was much too small for him and he had to wiggle to get free from it. The lid banged. Instantly every boy had turned in his seat to gaze at him, and he saw that this was the worst place that could have fallen to his lot. In his corner he was trapped, a sea of mocking, curious faces between him and his tormentors.

The clergyman smiled palely at him.

"I understand that you are a new boy, Stonehouse, and I don't wish to be too severe with you. At the same time we must begin as we are to go on. And you were not behaving very well at prayers this morning, were you?"

Robert moved his lips soundlessly. But no answer was expected of him.

The question was rhetorical. "You weren't," the enemy said,

"attending. You were trying to make your companions laugh--"

This, at least, was unbearably unjust.

"I wasn't," Robert interrupted loudly.

Someone moved to compassion hissed, "Say 'sir'-say sir,'" but he was beyond help. From that moment on he was beyond fear. He dug himself in, dogged and defiant.

"Come now, Stonehouse, I saw you myself. You were only pretending to join in, now weren't you? How was it? Didn't you know the prayer?"

"No."

"Don't be so abrupt, my boy. Say 'sir' when you answer me. How is it that you don't know it? You go to church, don't you?"

"No."

"Say 'sir.'"

"Sir."

"Well, chapel, then. You go to chapel, no doubt?"

Robert stared blankly.

"You don't? But surely your mother takes you--"

"I haven't got a mother." His voice sounded in his own ears like a shout. He scowled down at the faces nearest him. He was ready to fight them now. If they were going to say anything about his mother, good or bad, he would fly at them, just as he had flown at his old aggressors in the Terrace, regardless of size and numbers.

"Your father, then?"

"I haven't got a father."

His questioner smiled faintly, not without asperity.

"Come, come, you are not yet a gentleman in independent circumstances.

Who takes care of you?"

"Christine."

"And who, pray, is Christine?"

Who was Christine? It was as though suddenly the corner of a curtain had been raised for a moment, letting him look through into a strange new country.

"I don't know."

The clergyman waved his hand, damping down the titters that spluttered up nervously, threatening to explode outright. He himself had an air of slight dishevelment, as though his ideas had been blown about by a rude wind.

"I remember-Mr. Morton spoke to me-your guardian, of course. You should answer properly. But still, surely you have been taught-some religious instruction. You say your prayers, don't you?"

"No." He added after a moment of sudden, vivid recollection: "Not now."

It was nothing short of a debacle. He had pulled out the keystone of an invisible edifice which had come tumbling about their ears, leaving him in safety. Without knowing how or why, he knew he had got the better of them all. The grins died out of the upturned faces. They looked at him with amazement, with horror, yes-with respect.

"But you have been taught your catechism-to-to believe in God?"

"No."

"But the hymn-at least you could have sung the hymn, my poor boy. You can read, can't you?"

"No."

The awe passed before a storm of unchecked laughter. For one spectacular moment he had held them all helpless, every one of them, by the sheer audacity of his admissions. Now with one word he had fallen-an ignominious, comic outcast. The clergyman turned away, shaken but satisfied.

"You have a great deal to learn. I doubt if Mr. Morton quite realized-- A heavy task in front of you, too, Mr. Ricardo. One word, please--"

They spoke in undertones. Robert slid back into his seat. He could feel exultant glances sting and pierce him on every side. And yet when the door closed he had to look up. He was driven by a relentless curiosity to meet the worst. Mr. Ricardo had resumed his place. He did not so much as glance at Robert. He clung on to the lapels of his coat and blinked up at the window as though nothing had happened. But there was something impish twitching at the corners of his nervous mouth.

"My delightful young friends," he said, "you will be kind enough to leave Stonehouse in peace both now and hereafter. I know your amiable propensities, and my own conviction is that he is probably worth the pack of you. Get out your history books--"

So he was a friend. A powerful friend. But not powerful enough. No one looked at Robert again. And yet he knew, with all the certainty of inherited instinct, that they were waiting for him.

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