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Greatly to my disgust, Draven’s did not mope. As I sat down in my study, or wandered, still more solitary, in the crowded playground, it seemed as if all the school except myself had never been in better spirits. Fellows seemed to have shaken off the cloud which Browne’s expulsion had left behind. The football team was better than it had been for a year or two, and I overheard fellows saying that the “Saturday nights” were jollier even than last winter. In fact, it seemed as if, like Jonah, the throwing of me overboard had brought fine weather all round.

Still I was not going to give in. Draven’s should be ashamed of itself before I met it half way!

So I watched with satisfaction my face growing pale day by day, and I aided this new departure in my favour by eating less than usual, giving up outdoor exercise, and staying up late over my lessons.

I calculated that at the rate I was going I should be reduced to skin and bones by the end of my term, and perhaps at my funeral Draven’s would own they had wronged me. At present, however, my pallor seemed to escape their observation, and as for my late hours, all the good they did me was an imposition from Mr Draven for breaking rules.

As the days went on, I seemed to have dropped altogether out of life. I might have been invisible, for anything any one seemed to see of me. Even the masters appeared to have joined in the conspiracy to ignore me, and for a whole week I sat at my solitary desk without hearing the sound of my own voice.

My readers may scoff when I tell them that at the end of a fortnight I felt like running away. The silence and isolation which had amused me at first became a slow torture at last, and, poor-spirited wretch that I was, my only comfort was in now and then crying in bed in the dark.

I made up for this secret weakness by putting on a swagger in public, and rendered myself ridiculous in consequence. Draven’s could hardly help being amused by a fellow who one day slunk in and out among them self-consciously pale, black under the eyes, with a hacking cough and a funereal countenance, and the next blustered about defiantly and glared at every one he met.

The fact was, having despaired of making a friend, my one longing now was to make an enemy. I would have paid all my pocket-money twice over for a quarrel or a fight with somebody. But that was a luxury harder to get even than a friendly word.

I tried one day.

I was mooning disconsolately round the playground, when I met young Wigram, the most artless youngster in all Draven’s.

“You played up well in the second fifteen on Saturday,” I said, as if I had spoken to him not five minutes ago, whereas, as a matter of fact, the sound of my own voice gave me quite a shock.

“Yes,” began he, falling into the snare, “I was lucky with that run up from–er–I–beg pardon–good-bye,” and he bolted precipitately.

It was a mild victory as far as it went, but it did not end there, for that afternoon I came upon a group in the playground, the central figure of which was the wretched Wigram, on his knees in the act of apologising humbly all round for having been cad enough to speak to me. It seemed a good chance for the long-wished-for quarrel, and I jumped at it.

“Let him go!” shouted I, breaking into the group and addressing the company generally. “If any one touches him he will have to fight me!”

Alas! they stared a little, and then laughed a little, and then strolled away, with Wigram among them, leaving me alone. After that I knew I was beaten, and might as well own it, for a disappointed enemy is a far worse failure than a disappointed friend.