Unconscious of the interest and amusement they were exciting among the sporting section of the Sixth, they kept the pace up to the finish, and when at last Mr Jellicott said, “Cease writing and bring up your papers,” both groaned simultaneously, as much as to say, “A second or two more would have done it.”
The examination was over, but the event of that memorable day was still to take place.
Five minutes later Oliver, who had retired alone, as usual, to his study, there to announce to the anxious Stephen how he had fared in the examination, caught the sudden sound of an old familiar footstep outside his door, which sent the blood to his cheeks with strange emotion. Stephen heard it, and knew it too.
“There’s that beast Wraysford,” he said, at the very instant that Wraysford, not waiting to knock, flung open the door and entered.
There was no need for him to announce his errand. It was written on his face as he advanced with outstretched hand to his old friend.
“Noll, old man,” was all he could say, as their eyes met, “the youngster’s right—I am a beast!”
At the first word—the first friendly word spoken to him for months—Oliver started to his feet like one electrified; and before the sentence was over his hand was tightly grasping the hand of his friend, and Stephen had disappeared from the scene. It is no business of ours to pry into that happy study for the next quarter of an hour. If we did the reader would very likely be disappointed, or perhaps wearied, or perhaps convinced that these two were as great fools in the manner of their making up as they had been in the manner of their falling out.
Oh! the happiness of that precious quarter of an hour, when the veil that has divided two faithful friends is suddenly dashed aside, and they rush one to the other, calling themselves every imaginable bad name in the dictionary, insisting to the verge of quarrelling that it was all their fault, and no fault at all of the other, far too rapturous to talk ordinary common sense, and far too forgetful of everything to remember that they are saying the same thing over and over again every few minutes.
“The falling out of faithful friends”—as the old copybooks say in elegant Virgilian Latin—“renewing is of love.” And so it was with Oliver and Wraysford.
Why, they were twice the friends they were before! Twice! Fifty times! And they laughed and talked and made fools of themselves for a whole half-hour over the discovery, and might have done so for an hour, had not Stephen, who had patiently remained outside for a reasonable time, now returned to join in the celebration.