"You'd better find it or I shall have to beat you, really hard this
time. Here, you'd better keep this chalk in your pocket, it's sure
to come in handy later on. Don't stop to thank me for all I've
done, it only embarrasses me."

As Comus hadn't got a study Lancelot spent a feverish half-hour in
looking for it, incidentally missing another footer practice.

"Everything is very jolly here," wrote Lancelot to his sister
Emmeline. "The prefects can give you an awful hot time if they
like, but most of them are rather decent. Some are Beasts.
Bassington is a prefect though only a junior one. He is the Limit
as Beasts go. At least I think so."

Schoolboy reticence went no further, but Emmeline filled in the
gaps for herself with the lavish splendour of feminine imagination.
Francesca's bridge went crashing into the abyss.



CHAPTER III



On the evening of a certain November day, two years after the
events heretofore chronicled, Francesca Bassington steered her way
through the crowd that filled the rooms of her friend Serena
Golackly, bestowing nods of vague recognition as she went, but with
eyes that were obviously intent on focussing one particular figure.