“No, I’ll have dinner down in the Tuck,” said Michael, “and we can go for a walk afterwards, if you like. It’s the first really decent day we’ve had this year.”
So after a lunch of buns, cheese-cakes, fruit pastilles, and vanilla biscuits, eaten in the noisy half-light of the Tuckshop, accompanied by the usual storm of pellets, Michael and Alan set out to grapple with the situation Michael had by his own hasty behaviour created.
“The chaps seem rather sick with you,” observed Alan, as they strolled arm-in-arm across the school-ground not yet populous with games.
“Well, they are such a set of sheep,” Michael urged in justification of himself.
“I thought you rather liked them.”
“I did at first. I do still in a way. I do when nothing matters; but that horrible line in the paper did matter most awfully, and I couldn’t stick their bleating. You see, you’re different. You just say nothing. That’s all right. But these fools tried to say something and couldn’t. I always did hate people who tried very obviously. That’s why I like you. You’re so casual and you always seem to fit.”
“I don’t talk, because I know if I opened my mouth I should make an ass of myself,” said Alan.
“There you are, that’s what I say. That’s why it’s possible to talk to you. You see I’m a bit mad.”
“Shut up, you ass,” commanded Alan, smiling.
“Oh, not very mad. And I’m not complaining. But I am a little bit mad. I always have been.”