Chapter Eighteen.
The Martyr-Student.
Impositique rogis juvenes ante ora parentum.
Georgic Four, 1 71.
The days that followed, as the boys resumed the regular routine of school work, passed by very rapidly and pleasantly—rapidly, because the long-expected Christmas holidays were approaching; pleasantly, because the boys were thoroughly occupied in working up the subjects for the final examination. For Walter especially, those days were lighted up with the warm glow of popularity and success. He was aiming with boyish eagerness to win one more laurel by gaining the first place in his form, and whenever he was not taking exercise, either in some school game or by a ramble along his favourite cliffs and sands, he was generally to be found hard at work in Mr Percival’s rooms, learning the voluntary repetitions, or going over the trial subjects with Henderson, who had now quite passed the boundary line which separated the idle from the industrious boys.
One morning Henderson came in chuckling and laughing to himself. “So Power’s taking a leaf out of your book, Walter. I declare he’s becoming a regular sociable grosbeak.”
“Sociable grosbeak? what do you mean?”
“O, don’t you know that I’m writing a drama called the ‘Sociable Grosbeaks,’ in which you and Ken and I are introduced? I didn’t mean to introduce Power, he wasn’t gregarious enough; but I shall now, and he shall prologise.”
“But why is he more sociable now?”