Two days later Roland received the following reply:
My Dear Roland,—So glad to hear from you again, and many congratulations on your firsts. I had heard about them as a matter of fact, and had been meaning to write to you, but I am very busy just now. April told me about it; she seemed awfully pleased. I must say she was looking jolly pretty; she thinks a lot of you. Sort of hero. If I were you I should think a bit more about her and a little less about your Bettys and Dollys.
I’m looking forward to the holidays. We must manage to have a few good rags somehow. The Saundersons are giving a dance, so that ought to be amusing. Ever yours,
Ralph.
Roland’s comment on this letter was “Jealous little beast.” He wished he hadn’t written to him. And why drag April in? He and April were great friends; they always had been. Once they had imagined themselves sweethearts. When they went out to parties they had always sat next each other during tea and held hands under the table; in general post Roland had often been driven into the center because of a brilliant failure to take the chair that was next to hers. They had kissed sometimes at dances in the shadow of a passage, and once at a party, when they had been pulling crackers, he had slipped on to the fourth finger of her left hand a brass ring that had fallen from the crumpled paper. She still kept that ring, although the days of courtship were over. Roland had altered since he had gone to Fernhurst. But they were great friends, and there was always an idea between the two families that the children might eventually marry. Mr. Whately was, indeed, fond of prefacing some remote speculation about the future with, “By the time Roland and April are married——”
There was no need, Roland felt, for Ralph to have dragged April into the business at all. He was aggrieved, and the whole business seemed again a waste and an encumbrance. Was it worth while? He got ragged in the house, and he had to spend an hour in Howard’s company before he met Dolly at all. Howard was really rather terrible; so conceited, so familiar; and now that he had found an audience he indulged it the whole time. He was at his worst when he attempted sentiment. Once when they were walking back he turned to Roland, in the middle of a soliloquy, with a gesture of profound disdain and resignation.
“But what’s all this after all?” he said. “It’s nothing; it’s pleasant; it passes the time, and we have to have some distractions in this place to keep us going. But it’s not the real thing; there’s all the difference in the world between this and the real thing. A kiss can be anything or nothing; it can raise one to—to any height, or it can be like eating chocolates. I’m not a chap, you know, who really cares for this sort of thing. I’m in love. I suppose you are too.”
And Roland, who did not want to be outdone, confessed that there was someone, “a girl he had known all his life.”
“But you don’t want a girl you’ve known all your life; love’s not a thing that we drift into; it must be sudden; it must be unexpected; it must hurt.”
Howard was a sore trial, and it was with the most unutterable relief that Roland learned that he was leaving at Christmas to go to a crammer’s.