“You’ve got to play at the nets, do you hear?”

My friend simulated anger.  Struggling to get free, he ejaculated: 

“I’ll not be ordered about by an Iguanodon.  I’m not that sort of man.  O, White, I said I was—­he, he, ha!—­sorry.  I didn’t mean to be rude.  I didn’t see it in that light—­”

“Whack” came the books gently on his back.

“Oh, please, Moles White, please stop.  There’s a dear old Iguanodon.  Ow—­Ow—­Ow!”

By this time Doe was much out of breath, and his sentences were short and broken:  “It doesn’t hurt.  It’s lovely!  Ray, don’t stand there grinning like this chimpanzee, White.”

Suddenly at an upward swing the slender strap broke, and the books crashed through the window.

“Damn!” said White.

Doe, flushed and dishevelled, picked himself out of his chair.

“That’s what comes of bullying, Moles White.  I’ll pay for it.  It was my beastly fault!”

“No, you won’t,” said White.

“Don’t presume to contradict me, Moles White, or I’ll lick you!  I have stated that I’ll pay for it.”

“No,” White decided.  “We’ll split the difference and go shags.”

I felt the old fellow was not displeased at this compromise, for his purse had its limitations.  He withdrew from the scene and left us to our confidential chat.

When he had gone, there set in a reaction from the excited liveliness of his visit.  Doe looked sadly through the broken pane and said: 

“Isn’t Moles a corking old thing?  The sort of chap who’s naturally good, and couldn’t be anything else if he tried.”

Something wistful in the words caused me to see a vision of the gravel-path sweeping to the doorway of the baths.

“I say, Doe,” I began, “have you ever felt that you’d like to be—­something different from the ordinary run?”

Doe swung round on me.

“Have I ever?  Why, you know, Rupert, that I’m the most ambitious person in the world.  And, by Jove!  I believe I might have done something great—­”

“Might have done!” interrupted I, surprised that he should have decided at sixteen that his life was earmarked for a failure.  “You’ll probably live quite ten years more, so there’s still time.”

Doe turned again and sent his gaze through the broken window, replying in a little while: 

“Oh, I’ve lived long enough to know that I’m the sort that’s destined to make a mess of his life.  I—­oh, hang it, you wouldn’t understand...”

Evidently in Doe, as in me, his manhood had come down the corridor of the future and met his childhood face to face.  One minute before this he was an irresponsible baby “cheeking” Moles White; now he was the germinal man, borne down with the weight of life.  He paused for me to plead my understanding, and invite his confidence.  But an awkwardness held me dumb, and he was obliged to continue: 

“I wish you could understand, because—­Do you know, Rupert, why I made it up with you this afternoon?” He came away from the window and sat in a chair opposite me.  “It was because I was glowing with a new resolution.  It was the rippingest feeling in the world.  I—­I had just decided to cut with Freedham.”