predicted. Perhaps he began taking precautions against stiffness too
soon; anyhow he did not that term make a decent three-quarter, or any
sort of a three-quarter at all. It always took Peter a long time to get
well of things; he was easy to break and hard to mend--made in Germany,
as he was frequently told. So cheaply made was he that he could perform
nothing. Defeated dreams lived in his eyes; but to light them there
burned perpetually the blue and luminous lamps of undefeated mirth, and
also an immense friendliness for life and mankind and the delightful
world. Like the young knight Agenore, Peter the unlucky was of a mind
having no limits of hope. Over the blue and friendly eyes that lit the
small pale face, the half wistful brows were cocked with a kind of
whimsical and gentle humour, the same humour that twitched constantly
at the corners of his wide and flexible mouth. Peter was not a beautiful
person, but one liked, somehow, to look at him and to meet his
half-enquiring, half-amused, wholly friendly and sympathetic regard.
By the end of his first term at school, he found himself unaccountably
popular. Already he was called "Margery" and seldom seen by himself. He
enjoyed life, because he liked people and they liked him, and things in
general were rather jolly and very funny, even with a dislocated
shoulder. Also the great Urquhart would, when he remembered, take a
little notice of Peter--enough to inflate the young gentleman's spirit
like a blown-out balloon and send him soaring skywards, to float gently
down again at his leisure.

Towards the end of the term, Peter's half-brother Hilary came to visit
him. Hilary was tall and slim and dark and rather beautiful, and he lived
abroad and painted, and he told Peter that he was going to be married to
a woman called Peggy Callaghan. Peter, who had always admired Hilary from
afar, was rather sorry. The woman Peggy Callaghan would, he vaguely
believed, come between Hilary and his family; and already there were more