"I think they thought me nearly an idiot at home—not sane at all. But they didn't think of me very often. They used to apologise for me when people came to tea. I wasn't clever, of course—that's why they thought I'd make a good parson."
He paused—then very nervously he went on. "But now I've met you I shan't be. Nothing can make me. I've always watched you. I used to look at you in chapel. You're just as different from me as any one can be, and that's why you're like God to me. I don't want you to be decent to me. I think I'd rather you weren't. But I like to come in sometimes and hear you say that I'm dirty and untidy. That shows that you've noticed."
"But I'm not at all the sort of person to make a hero of," Olva said hurriedly. "I don't want you to feel like that about we. That's all sentimentality. You mustn't feel like that about anybody. You must stand on your own legs."
"I never have," said Burning, very solemnly, "and I never will. I've always had somebody to make a hero of. I would love to die for you, I would really. It's the only sort of thing that I can do, because I'm not clever. I know you think me very stupid."
"Yes, I do," said Olva, "and you mustn't talk like a schoolgirl. If we're friends and I let you come in here, you mustn't let your vest come over your cuffs and you must take those spots off your waistcoat, and brush your hair and clean your nails, and you must just be sensible and have a little humour. Why don't you play football?"
"I can't play games, I'm very shortsighted."
"Well, you must take some sort of exercise. Run round Parker's Piece or something, or go and run at Fenner's. You'll get so fat."
"I am getting fat. I don't think it matters much what I look like."
"It matters what every one looks like. And now you'd better cut. I've got to go out and see a man."
Burning submissively rose. He said no more but bundled out of the door in his usual untidy fashion. Olva came after him and banged his "oak" behind him. In Outer Court, looking now so vast and solemn in the silence of its snow, Bunning, stopping, pointed to the grey buildings that towered over them.