Page:Stanwood Pier--Harding of St Timothys.djvu/230

200 behind, and when the boy came up to his desk, he said:— "Harry, I'm afraid my nerves are not very good this morning; you can guess why. I need n't have sent you to your seat."

"It's all right, sir," Harry answered. "Mr. Eldredge,"—he looked up at him appealingly,—"have you heard anything, sir? Do you think he'll pull through?"

"I've only heard that it's very critical." The master gathered up his papers and books and walked away with Harry, talking to him about Rupert and recalling little acts of the boy which Harry had never known. "He's made the school better for being in it," said the master, as they parted.

Harry sat during the next study hour on the window-seat of his room, with a Greek book open before him, but he looked out of the window more than at the text. He looked across at the gabled end of the infirmary, where he knew that Rupert lay. The things that Rupert had done, and those which Rupert had tried and had failed to do—he measured