“But he won’t be,” Michael urged hopefully.
“He’d be happier at the House all the same,” Alan said. “He’d find his own set there.”
“But so he can at St. Mary’s.”
“Then it isn’t a democracy,” Alan stoutly maintained.
“I say, Alan,” exclaimed Michael, in surprise. “You’re getting quite a logician.”
“Well, you always persist in treating me like an idiot,” said Alan. “But I am reading Honor Mods. It’s a swat, but I’ve got to get some sort of a class.”
“You’ll probably get a first,” said Michael.
Yet how curious it was to think of Alan, whom he still regarded as chiefly a good-looking and capable athlete, taking a first class in a school he himself had indolently passed over. Of course he would never take a first. He was too much occupied with the perfection of new leg-breaks. And what would he do after his degree, his third in greats? A third was the utmost Michael mentally allowed him in the Final Schools.
“I suppose you’ll ultimately try for the Indian Civil?” Michael asked. “Do you remember when we used to lie awake talking in bed at Carlington Road? It was always going to be me who did everything intellectual; you were always the sportsman.”
“I am still. Michael, I think I’ve got a chance of my blue this year. If I can keep that leg-break,” he added fervidly. “There’s no slow right-hander of much class in the Varsity. I worked like a navvy at that leg-break last vac.”