“Taffy, you ought not to have spoken so.”  Humility’s eyes were tearful.

Taffy’s conscience was already accusing him.  He snatched up his cap and ran out.

“Miss Honoria!”

She did not turn.

“Miss Honoria—­I am sorry!” He overtook her, but she turned her face away.  “Forgive me!”

She halted, and after a moment looked him in the eyes.  He saw then that she had been crying.

“The first time I came to see you he whipped me,” she said slowly.

“I am sorry; indeed I am.”

“Taffy—­”

“Miss Honoria.”

“I said—­Taffy.”

“Honoria, then.”

“Do you know what it is to feel lonely here?”

Taffy remembered the afternoons when he had roamed the sand-hills longing for George’s company.  “Why, yes,” said he; “it used to be always lonely.”

“I think we have been the loneliest children in the whole world—­you and I and George—­only George didn’t feel it the same way.  And now it’s coming to an end with you.  You are going up to Oxford, and soon you will have heaps of friends.  Can you not understand?  Suppose there were two prisoners, alone in the same prison, but shut in different cells, and one heard that the other’s release had come.  He would feel—­would he not?—­that now he was going to be lonelier than ever.  And yet he might be glad of the other’s liberty, and if the chance were given, might be the happier for shaking hands with the other and wishing him joy.”

Taffy had never heard her speak at all like this.

“But you are going to Carwithiel, and George is famous company.”

“I am going over to Carwithiel because I hate Tredinnis.  I hate every stone of it, and will sell the place as soon as ever I come of age.  And George is the best fellow in the world.  Some day I shall marry him (oh, it is all arranged!), and we shall live at Carwithiel and be quite happy; for I like him, and he likes people to be happy.  And we shall talk of you.  Being out of the world ourselves, we shall talk of you, and the great things you are going to do, and the great things you are doing.  We shall say to each other, ’It’s all very well for the world to be proud of him, but we have the best right, for we grew up with him and know the stories he used to tell us; and when the time came for his going, it was we who waved from the door—­”

“Honoria—­”

“But there is one thing you haven’t told, and you shall now, if you care to—­about your examination and what you did at Oxford.”

So he sat down beside her on a sand-hill and told her:  about the long low-ceiled room in the quadrangle of the Bodleian, the old marbles which lined the walls, the examiner at the blue baize table, and the little deal tables (all scribbled over with names and dates and verses and ribald remarks) at which the candidates wrote; also of the viva voce examination in the antechamber of the Convocation House, He told it all as if it were the great event he honestly felt it to be.