Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/41

Rh 'No,' I said, 'not like other fellows have.'

Another pause.

Then he, with a loud sigh:

'Friends, then? You'd like to have friends, wouldn't you?'

'One 'ud be enough,' I said.

Another pause and another loud sigh as he said:

'You're in one of your bad humours to-night.'

Then he burst out:

'Upon my word, Leicester, you're a confounded fool! There you sit, like a miserable old cynic, hugging your conceit, as full of morbid nonsense as you can well hold, a fool a  a ' He stammered.

'Well.?'

Then he came to a full stop: made another movement in his chair, and began again, with some resolution:

'Now look here. There you are: a fellow who might be as liked as any one in the school, if you only cared.—Instead of that, you're the most disliked in the school, and all on account of your confounded conceit! You think everyone else is a fool but yourself: and you think you think it doesn't matter in the least what they think,—about you or anything else either! Now that's rot!'

'I don't see it,' I said. 'In two years, who will know whether I was liked or disliked at a school called Glastonbury? Of course I don't care about it! Who would?'

'You do care, you care a great deal!'

'Yes, Clayton?'

'I know it. If you didn't care, would you take the trouble to tell yourself so a hundred times a day like you do, and make yourself miserable about it? Pooh-h! You do care, right enough.'

I kept silence.

He proceeded:

'Leicester, you're a fool. And it's all the worse because you needn't be one without you liked. You might be a very nice fellow. You can be—when you like.'

A pause.

'Well?' asked he.