Page:Stanwood Pier--Harding of St Timothys.djvu/204

176 attractions, and the prescribed meeting was a mere formality.

The society was at this inactive period so purposeless that it had nothing to do but to discuss the merits of the various fifth-form boys who might be called on to continue it. Harry had begun to weary of the impressive secrecy and exclusiveness of its performances. To march away every Sunday afternoon with the school looking on and holding its breath had ceased to give him a pleasurable exhilaration. The sham importance of it all made him now a little ashamed. He felt it was one of those vacuous manifestations of prominence against which Philip Ward had uttered his warning.

One Sunday, as the members of the Crown were proceeding to their rallying-place, they passed Rupert Ormsby, swinging along on his crutches, with Francis Stoddard walking at his side. It galled Harry to have to go by with the others and say nothing more than "Hello!" It grated on his sensitiveness, as if he were unwillingly a party to an insult, or at least a