"What a lot you know!" said Cæsar. "And you have a memory like my father's. I'm beginning to think, Jonathan, that you'll be a swell like him some day—in the Cabinet, perhaps."
"Ah," said John, with shining eyes.
"I hope I shall live to see it," Desmond added, with feeling.
"Thanks, old chap. A crust or a triumph shared with a pal tastes twice as good."
One soft afternoon in spring, after four Bill, Desmond and John were approaching the iron gates of the Haunted House. They had not taken this particular walk since the day when Desmond got his Flannels. During the winter term, Scaife and Desmond became members of the Football Eleven. During this term Scaife won the hundred yards and quarter-mile; Desmond won the half-mile and mile. In a word, they had done, from the athletic point of view, nearly all that could be done. A glorious victory at Lord's seemed assured. Scaife, Captain and epitome of the brains and muscles of the Eleven, had grown into a powerful man, with the mind, the tastes, the passions of manhood. Desmond, on the other hand, while nearly as tall (and much handsomer in John's eyes), still retained the look of youth. Indeed, he looked younger than John, although a year his senior; and John knew himself to be the elder and wiser, knew that Desmond leaned upon him whenever a crutch was wanted.
The chief difficulty which besets a school friendship between two boys is that of being alone together. In Form, in the playing-fields, in the boarding-house, life is public. Even in the most secluded lane, a Harrow boy is not secure against the unwelcome salutations of heated athletes who have been taking a cross-country run, or leaping over, or into, the Pinner brook. To John the need of sanctuary had become pressing.
Upon this blessed spring afternoon—ever afterwards recalled with special affection—a retreat was suddenly provided. As the boys jumped over the last stile into the lane which led to the Haunted House, Desmond exclaimed—
"By Jove, the gates are open!"
Then they saw that a man, a sort of caretaker, was in the act of shutting them.
"May we go in?" John asked civilly.