“I say, Carey, why are you being such a silly ass?  It doesn’t do you any good cutting me and all that.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” answered Philip.

“Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t talk.”

“You bore me,” said Philip.

“Please yourself.”

Rose shrugged his shoulders and left him.  Philip was very white, as he always became when he was moved, and his heart beat violently.  When Rose went away he felt suddenly sick with misery.  He did not know why he had answered in that fashion.  He would have given anything to be friends with Rose.  He hated to have quarrelled with him, and now that he saw he had given him pain he was very sorry.  But at the moment he had not been master of himself.  It seemed that some devil had seized him, forcing him to say bitter things against his will, even though at the time he wanted to shake hands with Rose and meet him more than halfway.  The desire to wound had been too strong for him.  He had wanted to revenge himself for the pain and the humiliation he had endured.  It was pride:  it was folly too, for he knew that Rose would not care at all, while he would suffer bitterly.  The thought came to him that he would go to Rose, and say: 

“I say, I’m sorry I was such a beast.  I couldn’t help it.  Let’s make it up.”

But he knew he would never be able to do it.  He was afraid that Rose would sneer at him.  He was angry with himself, and when Sharp came in a little while afterwards he seized upon the first opportunity to quarrel with him.  Philip had a fiendish instinct for discovering other people’s raw spots, and was able to say things that rankled because they were true.  But Sharp had the last word.

“I heard Rose talking about you to Mellor just now,” he said.  “Mellor said:  Why didn’t you kick him?  It would teach him manners.  And Rose said:  I didn’t like to.  Damned cripple.”

Philip suddenly became scarlet.  He could not answer, for there was a lump in his throat that almost choked him.

XX

Philip was moved into the Sixth, but he hated school now with all his heart, and, having lost his ambition, cared nothing whether he did ill or well.  He awoke in the morning with a sinking heart because he must go through another day of drudgery.  He was tired of having to do things because he was told; and the restrictions irked him, not because they were unreasonable, but because they were restrictions.  He yearned for freedom.  He was weary of repeating things that he knew already and of the hammering away, for the sake of a thick-witted fellow, at something that he understood from the beginning.