THE LEE SHORE




CHAPTER I

A HEREDITARY BEQUEST


During the first week of Peter Margerison's first term at school,
Urquhart suddenly stepped, a radiant figure on the heroic scale, out of
the kaleidoscopic maze of bemusing lights and colours that was Peter's
vision of his new life.

Peter, seeing Urquhart in authority on the football field, asked, "Who is
it?" and was told, "Urquhart, of course," with the implication "Who else
could it be?"

"Oh," Peter said, and blushed. Then he was told, "Standing right in
Urquhart's way like that! Urquhart doesn't want to be stared at by all
the silly little kids in the lower-fourth." But Urquhart was, as a
matter of fact, probably used to it.

So that was Urquhart. Peter Margerison hugged secretly his two pieces of
knowledge; so secret they were, and so enormous, that he swelled visibly
with them; there seemed some danger that they might even burst him. That