Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/35

 "You wait till you've got one of your own," said the well-meaning man, "with a nice new carpet and table-cloth, and your own family portraits and sportin' picters!"

"At any rate I should know a horse from a cow," returned Jan, examining something in the nature of a sporting print, "and not hang up rot like that!"

"You let Mr. Shockley hear you!" cried Morgan, with a laugh. "You'll catch it!"

"I've no doubt I shall do that," said Jan, grimly. He followed Morgan into an empty study, and asked if it was likely to be his.

"Not unless you take a pretty high place in the school. It's only the top dozen in the house that get these front studies upstairs. You can make up your mind to one at the back, and be glad if it's not downstairs, where everybody can see in and throw in stones."

Jan felt he had not made a friend of Morgan; and yet in his heart he was more favourably impressed with what he had seen than his peculiar temperament permitted him to show. Little as their adventitious attractions might appeal to him, there was something attractive to Jan about this system of separate studies. It appealed, and not without design, to that spirit of independence which happened to be one of his stronger points. Moreover he could conceive a very happy intimacy between two real friends in one of these little dens; and altogether he brought a brighter face to the breakfast-table than he had shown for an instant overnight. Heriot glanced at it with an interested twinkle, as though he had been at the explorer's elbow all the morning; but whatever he might have known, he betrayed his knowledge neither by word nor sign.

After breakfast the two boys sallied forth with orders