And then he felt the misery of his life.  It seemed to his childish mind that this unhappiness must go on for ever.  For no particular reason he remembered that cold morning when Emma had taken him out of bed and put him beside his mother.  He had not thought of it once since it happened, but now he seemed to feel the warmth of his mother’s body against his and her arms around him.  Suddenly it seemed to him that his life was a dream, his mother’s death, and the life at the vicarage, and these two wretched days at school, and he would awake in the morning and be back again at home.  His tears dried as he thought of it.  He was too unhappy, it must be nothing but a dream, and his mother was alive, and Emma would come up presently and go to bed.  He fell asleep.

But when he awoke next morning it was to the clanging of a bell, and the first thing his eyes saw was the green curtain of his cubicle.

XII

As time went on Philip’s deformity ceased to interest.  It was accepted like one boy’s red hair and another’s unreasonable corpulence.  But meanwhile he had grown horribly sensitive.  He never ran if he could help it, because he knew it made his limp more conspicuous, and he adopted a peculiar walk.  He stood still as much as he could, with his club-foot behind the other, so that it should not attract notice, and he was constantly on the look out for any reference to it.  Because he could not join in the games which other boys played, their life remained strange to him; he only interested himself from the outside in their doings; and it seemed to him that there was a barrier between them and him.  Sometimes they seemed to think that it was his fault if he could not play football, and he was unable to make them understand.  He was left a good deal to himself.  He had been inclined to talkativeness, but gradually he became silent.  He began to think of the difference between himself and others.

The biggest boy in his dormitory, Singer, took a dislike to him, and Philip, small for his age, had to put up with a good deal of hard treatment.  About half-way through the term a mania ran through the school for a game called Nibs.  It was a game for two, played on a table or a form with steel pens.  You had to push your nib with the finger-nail so as to get the point of it over your opponent’s, while he manoeuvred to prevent this and to get the point of his nib over the back of yours; when this result was achieved you breathed on the ball of your thumb, pressed it hard on the two nibs, and if you were able then to lift them without dropping either, both nibs became yours.  Soon nothing was seen but boys playing this game, and the more skilful acquired vast stores of nibs.  But in a little while Mr. Watson made up his mind that it was a form of gambling, forbade the game, and confiscated all the nibs in the boys’ possession.  Philip had been very adroit, and it was with a heavy heart that he gave