Page:Stanwood Pier--Harding of St Timothys.djvu/196

168 away his work; and as for Frank Windsor, he could not endure either solitude or scholarship.

Yet Harry was making a struggle, and he acquired the habit of resorting in the afternoon to the library instead of to his room. There he found he could read and write undisturbed. And there, too, he began to take an interest in those queer, quiet boys who spent so much time at tables and desks that their sleeves were rubbed shiny, and whom Harry had been inclined to regard as the freaks and offscourings of the school.

They turned out to be more human than he had supposed. And he found that if he did not ridicule them, as many of the fellows did, they were rather pleased than otherwise when he uttered some extravagant sentiment to shock their primness.

During the rest of that term, which closed a few days before Christmas, Harry helped aspirants to construct stories and essays for the "Mirror," he tried to improve the standard of the paper, he availed himself of his author-