Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/156



day was a Saint's Day, which you had to yourself in the good old times from chapel in the early forenoon till private work after tea. Jan had just come out of chapel, and was blinking in the bright spring sunlight, when of a sudden his blood throbbed more than the Mile had made it. Evan Devereux had broken away from some boon companions, and was gaily smiling in Jan's path.

"I say, I do congratulate you on yesterday! Everybody's talking about it. I meant to speak to you before. That's the worst of being in differerent houses; we never see anything of each other, even now we're in the same form."

The boy is an artless animal; here were two, and second simpleton outshining the first in beams of pure good-will.

"That can't be helped," said Jan, with intentionally reassuring cordiality, so that Master Evan should not think he was, or possibly could have been, offended for a single instant.

"Still, I don't see why we shouldn't help it for once," responded Evan, looking the other rather frankly up and down. "There's nothing on, this morning, except the final of the School Fives, is there? Why shouldn't we go for a stroll together?"