talking and telling about myself that I knew very little about him,
curiously little when I come to think of it. But the last incident of
my school life makes me think he was a sort of mute poet, and had much
more in him than I imagined. It was just before I first heard that I
had won an Exhibition and was to go to Trinity. Dr. Steele had called
me into his study to tell me the great news; he was very glad, he
said, and insisted that it was all due to my last year's hard work.
The 'hard' work had been very interesting to me, or I would not have
done much of it. The doctor wound up, I remember, by assuring me that
if I went on studying as I had been studying during the last year I
might yet do as well as my brother Willie, and be as great an honour
to the school and everybody connected with it as he had been.

"This made me smile, for though I liked Willie, and knew he was a
fairly good scholar, I never for a moment regarded him as my equal in
any intellectual field. He knew all about football and cricket and
studied the school-books assiduously, whereas I read everything that
pleased me, and in my own opinion always went about 'crowned.'" Here
he laughed charmingly with amused deprecation of the conceit.

"It was only about the quality of the crown, Frank, that I was in any
doubt. If I had been offered the Triple Tiara, it would have appeared
to me only the meet reward of my extraordinary merit....

"When I came out from the doctor's I hurried to my friend to tell him
all the wonderful news. To my surprise he was cold and said, a little
bitterly, I thought:

"'You seem glad to go?'