Old Tring said:  “Killigrew, this is Ruan, who has come from Bolerium, or, as you would vulgarly term it, Land’s End.  Take him and show him the school, but bring him back to have tea with his guardian.”  The two boys went out and as he was shutting the door Ishmael, who had the woodland hearing of a little animal, caught some low-toned words of the Parson’s:  “... makings of a fine spirit.  I assure you, Tring ...”  That was himself, Ishmael Ruan, whom they were speaking of.  “A fine spirit ...”; the phrase pricked his imagination—­he swelled to it.  He glanced at Killigrew, who was whistling in rosy unconsciousness of proximity to any spirit at all, and suddenly felt enormously relieved that the other boy had not heard, aware, by the new angle to which he was already responding, that Killigrew would have been disgusted rather than impressed.  Once in the courtyard, the freemasonry of young things released from the pressure of grown-ups drew their eyes together.  Unconsciously Ishmael thrust his hands into the trouser pockets of his new serge suit, in imitation of Killigrew, whose swagger was really a thing inimitable.  Something stirred in Ishmael which had hitherto been unknown to him; it was not love, which in greater or lesser degree he already knew—­for he was an affectionate boy in his inarticulate way—­it was not merely an impulse for friendship; that would have been no alien thing.  It was the beginning of that relationship which only masculine creatures ever really know, a relationship which is intimate without ever making inroads on privacy; full of pleasure in companionship without any feeling of a blank when apart; where love cannot be said to exist, and yet of which, if the irrevocableness of death remove one of the two, there remains to the other a void that is felt recurrently for the rest of his life whenever anything arises which that other person alone could have felt and appreciated in quite the same way.  It was no David and Jonathan friendship which grew between Ishmael and Killigrew such as may sometimes be found among boys, but it was an intimacy that, in its aloof way, was to add something to the pattern of their lives that neither would have found without it.

In after years, if Ishmael had examined into the thing, which he never did, he would have seen that it was because, widely different as their two natures were, each had a side that corresponded.  For everyone has a part of him, nearly always the larger, which is in relation with the general run of the world, and also a part which is out of key with it.  Neither is more real than the other, though one is always bigger and more insistent than the other, and in the relative proportions lies every possibility.  It was those parts of them which were out of key with the ordinary acceptances that were attuned in Ishmael and Killigrew, though neither was as yet aware they had such aspects, far less in what measure.  On that first afternoon and for several days afterwards they were merely unthinkingly aware of a blind tolerance for each other that rose more nearly to a warm respect over the matter of Killigrew’s badger.