On their way home they were joined by Garrett, who still affected the sky-blue sweater, although he now wore it under his coat. In the presence of Garrett the two friends dropped the subject of their confidences, and the conversation became general.
CHAPTER VII
The Little Sisters
TIME crept slowly, as it is apt to do with boys at school. To the St. Cuthbert boys it seemed as if the year had leaden wings, but at length the week before Christmas arrived. All were now in expectation of coming events. If anticipation is half the joy, then most of the boys were taking their Christmas pleasures in advance.
Already the Christmas feeling was in the atmosphere. In various out-of-the-way places were stored bunches of holly and cedar and laurel. At all times of the day when boys where free from lessons, some one or other would be carrying strange wooden devices from place to place. Now one would be seen carrying to some out-of-the-way shed or unused classroom, wooden stars or double triangles. Another would partially and often unsuccessfully secrete a knot of clothesline. There never was such a demand for fine wire or binding twine.
All of which meant the mediate preparation for decorating the chapel, study-hall, refectory, and even to some extent, the gymnasium. It was a pretty fiction among the boys that all the preparations had to be done in secret. It was fiction only, for the real fact was that, in both divisions, everybody was interested and everybody knew exactly what everybody else was doing.
None entered into the work of remotely preparing for Christmas more heartily than Roy Henning and his friends, Bracebridge, Shealey, and Beecham.
There is a certain skill required in decorating. To some this proficiency never comes. It is perhaps an innate quality. It had never come to Roy Henning: He was no decorator. He could neither make a wreath of evergreens, nor cover a device with green stuff creditably.