“Well,” Hilary said, passing his hand wearily over his forehead, “I must go to your detestable station and catch my train....  I’ve got a horrible headache.  The strain of all this is frightful.”

He looked as if it was.  His pale face, nervous and strained, stabbed at Peter’s affection for him.  Peter’s affection for Hilary had always been and always would be an unreasoning, loyal, unspoilably tender thing.

He went to the station to help Hilary to catch his train.  The enterprise was a failure; it was not a job at which either Margerison was good.  They had to wait in the detestable station for another.  The annoyance of that (it is really an abnormally depressing station) worked on Hilary’s nervous system to such an extent that he might have flung himself on the line and so found peace from the disappointments of life, had not Peter been at hand to cheer him up.  There were certainly points about young Peter as a companion for the desperate.

Peter, having missed hall, as well as Hilary’s train, went back to his room and put an egg on to boil.  He lay back in his most comfortable chair to watch it; he needed comfort rather.  He was going down.  It had been so jolly—­and it was over.

He had not got much to show for the good time he had had.  Physically, he was more of a wreck than he had been when he came up.  He was slightly lame in one leg, having broken it at football (before he had been forbidden to play) and had it badly set.  He mended so badly always.  He was also at the moment right-handed (habitually he used his left) and that was motor bicycling.  He had not particularly distinguished himself in his work.  He was good at nothing except diabolo, and not very good at that.  And he had spent more money than he possessed, having drawn lavishly on his next year’s allowance.  He might, in fact, have been described as an impoverished and discredited wreck.  But for such a one he had looked very cheerful, till Hilary had said that about going down.  That was really depressing.

Peter, as the egg boiled, looked back rather wistfully over his year.  It seemed a very long time ago since he had come up.  His had been an undistinguished arrival; he had not come as a sandwich man between two signboards that labelled his past career and explained his path that was to be; he had been unaddressed to any destination.  The only remark on his vague and undistinguished label had perhaps been of the nature of “Brittle.  This side up with care.”  He had no fame at any game; he did not row; he was neither a sporting nor, in any marked degree, a reading man.  He did a little work, but he was not very fond of it or very good.  The only things one could say of him were that he seemed to have an immense faculty of enjoyment and a considerable number of friends, who knew him as Margery and ate muffins and chocolates between tea and dinner in his rooms.