Already they were friends, and took, as a matter of course, their Sunday walks together. Over the moist fields to the wood where people smoked or along the banks of the wide muddy river as far as the chain-ferry. Richard Vernon was barely an inch the taller of the two, but Edward thought of him as being exceptionally large for his age. His mild, good-tempered air invested his broad shoulders with an added strength and solidity. The second and third termers, in exercising their prerogative of bullying the new youths, had preferred to leave Vernon alone.

Of Edward, who was wiry and strong as a monkey, they felt no such timidity. They attacked him continually, in the passages, in the changing-room, in the dormitory—and when, fighting with the power of desperation, he managed to keep three or even four of them at bay, they merely doubled their numbers and, getting him helpless at last, applied their clumsy traditional tortures, mocking his tears, which were not of pain but of rage.

Richard Vernon seemed mildly amused by the difficulties which Edward was perpetually creating for himself. He did not altogether believe that they were so necessary or so unavoidable. But his sympathy was entirely practical. He helped Edward with his sausages, his boot-cleaning and his impositions. As for his own work, he appeared to get through it without effort. From time to time he made mistakes, was punished, justly or unjustly, like all the others. It did not worry him. He forgot a beating as soon as he could comfortably sit down again.

Edward was amazed by his equanimity. Impatient at and furious with it by turns. But he could never finally condemn it. He gave up trying to quarrel with Richard and surrendered to a deepening admiration.