In reality he, like most boys, detested the habit; but it seemed a fine thing to do, and to some, at any rate, it was a refuge from vacuity.  Besides, they had a confused notion that there was something “manly” in it, and it derived an additional zest from the stringency of the rules adopted to put it down.  So a number of the boys smoked, and some few of them to such excess as to get them into great mischief, and form a habit which they could never afterwards abandon.

One morning of the Easter holidays, Eric, Montagu, and Russell started for an excursion down the coast to Rilby Head.  As they passed through Ellan, Eric was deputed to go and buy Easter eggs and other provisions, as they did not mean to be back for dinner.  In about ten minutes he caught up the other two, just as they were getting out of the town.

“What an age you’ve been buying a few Easter eggs,” said Russell, laughing; “have you been waiting till the hens laid?”

“No; they are not the only things I’ve got.”

“Well, but you might have got all the grub at the same shop.”

“Ay; but I’ve procured a more refined article.  Guess what it is?”

The two boys didn’t guess, and Eric said, to enlighten them, “Will you have a whiff, Monty?”

“A whiff!  Oh!  I see you’ve been wasting your tin on cigars—­alias, rolled cabbage-leaves.  Oh fumose puer!”

“Well, will you have one?”

“If you like,” said Montagu, wavering; “but I don’t much care to smoke.”

“Well, I shall, at any rate,” said Eric, keeping off the wind with his cap, as he lighted a cigar, and began to puff.

They strolled on in silence; the smoking didn’t promote conversation, and Russell thought he had never seen his friend look so ridiculous, and entirely unlike himself, as he did while strutting along with the weed in his mouth.  The fact was, Eric didn’t guess how much he was hurting Edwin’s feelings, and he was smoking more to “make things look like the holidays,” by a little bravado, than anything else.  But suddenly he caught the expression of Russell’s face, and instantly said—­

“O, I forgot, Edwin; I know you don’t like smoking;” and he instantly flung the cigar over the hedge, being really rather glad to get rid of it.  With the cigar, he seemed to have flung away the affected manner he displayed just before, and the spirits of all three rose at once.

“It isn’t that I don’t like smoking only, Eric, but I think it wrong—­for us I mean.”

“O, my dear fellow! surely there can’t be any harm in it.  Why everybody smokes.”

“It may be all very well for men, although I’m not so sure of that.  But, at any rate, it’s wrong and ridiculous in boys.  You know yourself what harm it does in every way.”

“O, it’s a mere school rule against it.  How can it be wrong?  Why, I even know clergymen who smoke.”

Montagu laughed.  “Well, clergymen ain’t immaculate,” said he; “but I never met a man yet who didn’t tell you that he was sorry he’d acquired the habit.”