summer, he would have taken some literature out on to the cricket-field
or the downs, and put in a little steady reading there, with the aid of
a bag of cherries. But with the thermometer low, that was impossible.

He felt very lonely and dismal. He was not a man with many friends. In
fact, Barry and the other three were almost the only members of the
house with whom he was on speaking-terms. And of these four he saw very
little. Drummond and Barry were always out of doors or over at the
gymnasium, and as for M'Todd and De Bertini, it was not worth while
talking to the one, and impossible to talk to the other. No wonder
Shoeblossom felt dull. Once Barry and Drummond had taken him over to
the gymnasium with them, but this had bored him worse than ever. They
had been hard at it all the time--for, unlike a good many of the
school, they went to the gymnasium for business, not to lounge--and he
had had to sit about watching them. And watching gymnastics was one of
the things he most loathed. Since then he had refused to go.

That night matters came to a head. Just as he had settled down to read,
somebody, in flinging a cushion across the room, brought down the gas
apparatus with a run, and before light was once more restored it was
tea-time. After that there was preparation, which lasted for two hours,
and by the time he had to go to bed he had not been able to read a
single page of the enthralling work with which he was at present
occupied.

He had just got into bed when he was struck with a brilliant idea. Why
waste the precious hours in sleep? What was that saying of somebody's,
"Five hours for a wise man, six for somebody else--he forgot whom--eight
for a fool, nine for an idiot," or words to that effect? Five hours
sleep would mean that he need not go to bed till half past two. In the