in which Power and Henderson joined heartily; while Kenrick walked on in silence.
Next day the boys were scattered in every direction to their various homes. It need not be said that Walter passed very happy holidays that Christmas time. Power came and spent a fortnight with him; and let every boy who has a cheerful and affectionate home imagine for himself how blithely their days passed by. Power made himself a universal favourite, always unselfish, always merry, and throwing himself heartily into every amusement which the Evsons proposed. He and they were mutually sorry when the time came for them to part.
From Semlyn Lake, Walter’s home, to Fuzby, Kenrick’s home, the change is great indeed; yet I must take the reader there for a short time, before we return to the noisy and often troubled precincts of Saint Winifred’s School.
Before Power came to stay with the Evsons, Walter, with his father’s full permission, had written to ask Kenrick to join them at the same time, and this is the answer he got in reply—
“My Dear Walter,—I can’t tell you how much your letter tempted me. I should so like to come; I would give anything to come and see you. To be with you and Power at such a place as Semlyn must be—O Walter, it almost makes me envious to think of you there. But I can’t come, and I’ll tell you frankly the reason. I can’t afford, or rather I mean that my mother cannot afford, the necessary travelling expenses. I look on you, Walter, as my best school friend, so I may as well say at once that we are very, very poor. If I could even get to you by walking some of the way, and going third-class the rest, I would jump at the chance, but—. Lucky fellow, you know nothing of the res angusta domi.
“You must be amused at the name of this place, Fuzby-le-Mud. What charming prospects the name opens, does it not? I assure you the name fits the place exactly. My goodness! how I do hate the place. You’ll ask why then we live here? Simply because we must. Some misanthropic relation left us the house we live in, which saves rent.
“Yet, if you were with me, I think I could be happy even here. I don’t venture to ask you. First of all, we couldn’t make you one-tenth part as comfortable as you are at home; secondly, there isn’t the ghost of an amusement here, and if you came, you’d go back to Saint Winifred’s with a fit of blue devils, as I always do; thirdly, the change from Semlyn to Fuzby-le-Mud would be like walking from the Elysian fields and the asphodel meadows, into mere borboros as old Edwards would say. So I don’t ask you; and yet if you could come—why, the day would be marked with white in the dull calendar of—Your ever affectionate—
“Harry Kenrick.”
As Fuzby lay nearly in the route to Saint Winifred’s, Walter, grieved that his friend should be doomed to such dull holidays, determined, with Mr Evson’s leave, to pay him a three-days’ visit on his way to school. Accordingly, towards the close of the holidays, after a hopeful, a joyous, and an affectionate farewell to all at home, he started for Fuzby, from which he was to accompany Kenrick back to school; a visit fraught, as it turned out, with evil consequences, and one which he never afterwards ceased to look back upon with regret.
The railroad, after leaving far behind the glorious hills of Semlyn, passes through country flatter and more uninteresting at every mile, until it finds itself fairly committed to the fens. Nothing but dreary dykes, muddy and straight, guarded by the ghosts of suicidal pollards, and by rows of dreary and desolate mills, occur to break the blank grey monotony of the landscape. Walter was looking out of the window with curious eyes, and he was wondering what life in such conditions could be like, when the train uttered a despairing scream, and reached a station which the porter announced as Fuzby-le-Mud. Walter jumped down, and his hand was instantly seized by Kenrick with a warm and affectionate grasp.
“So you’re really here, Walter. I can hardly believe it. I half repent having brought you to such a place; but I was so dull.”
“I shall enjoy it exceedingly, Ken, with you. Shall I give my portmanteau to some man to take up to the village?”
“O, no; here’s a— well, I may as well call it a cart at once—to take it up in. The curate lent it me, and he calls it a pony-carriage; but it is, you see, nothing more or less than a cart. I hope you won’t be ashamed to ride in it.”