"The pure soul of Brewster!" he said. "My lord! if you'd known what he was like after he'd been in the house a term. He'd have taken a blooming lot of corrupting then. Gawd, but he was a lad!" And Gerald supplied some intriguing anecdotes of Brewster's early life. "He was a lad!" And Brewster's name started a train of associations, and Roland asked Gerald whether he had heard of Baker.
"Baker? Baker?" Gerald repeated. "No. I can't say I ever remember hearing anything about him. He must have been after my time."
Roland got up, walked across to his bureau, and taking a bunch of keys from his hip pocket unlocked a small top drawer. He took the drawer out and, bringing it across, laid it on the table. It was full of photographs, letters, ribbons, dance programmes, and he began to fumble among them: "I think we shall find something about Master Baker here," he said. "Ah, yes, here we are!" And he handed across to Gerald a large house photograph. "There he is, bottom row, fourth from the right."
Gerald scrutinised the photograph, holding it to the light.
"Lord, yes," he said, "that tells its own story; what's happened to him now?"
"He was head of the house two years ago; he's gone up to Selwyn. I believe he's going into the Church."
Gerald smiled. "When we all meet at an old boys' dinner in twenty years' time we shall get one or two shocks. Think of Brewster bald, and Maconochie stout, and Evans the father of a family!"
"My lord!"
And they began to rummage in the drawer, till the table was littered with letters and photographs.
The photographs led them from one reminiscence to another; and in that little series of isolated recollections they lived again through all that had remained vivid to them of their school-days.