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 "You have always had a cake, dear," said Meggie, reproachfully. "And don't forget that nice little engine thing, and your bicycle, and your wrist watch."

"You don't expect the family to rejoice because you were born, do you?" asked Piers, grinning.

"No, I don't expect anything," bawled Finch, "but to be badgered."

"Poor little boy, he's jealous." Piers passed a sunburned hand over Finch's head, stroking downward over his long nose, and ending with a playful jolt under the chin.

Finch's nerves were raw that morning. He was in the midst of the end-of-the-term examinations, and his increasing preoccupation with music seemed to render him less than ever able to cope with mathematics. He knew with dreadful certainty that he was not going to pass into the next form. The fact that his music teacher was not only pleased with him but deeply interested in him, would not make up for that. Combined with a skulking sense of helpless inferiority, he felt the exalted arrogance of one whose spirit moves on occasion in the free and boundless spaces of art.

With a kind of bellow, he turned on Piers and struck him in the chest. Piers caught his wrists and held them, smiling lazily into his wild, distorted face.

"See here, Eden," he called. "This little lamb is baaing because we celebrate Wake's birthday with more pep than we do his. Isn't it a crime?"

Eden lounged over, his lips drawn in a faint smile from his teeth which held a cigarette, and joined in the baiting.

All morning Finch's heart raged within him. At dinner Meggie and her grandmother both chose to correct him, to nag at him. He slouched, they said. He stuck his elbows out. He bolted his food so that he might be ready for the last helping of cherry tart before poor