“Oh, Brougham, darling, do lend me two bob till this evening.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got nothing but a shilling on me, Mr. Scriven.”

“Oh, well, that’ll do beautifully,” said Maurice, reflecting that after all he’d risk Edward’s not having the energy to answer.

*   *   *

This term, the afternoon was always a bad time for Maurice. For eighteen months now, he hadn’t been allowed by the doctor to play games. His heart was supposed to be strained by a motor-bike crash. He never noticed it. But it was a nuisance, because Gerald Ramsbotham played rugger, and Hughes and Moody squash, and Farncombe rowed; so that very often he was left between lunch and tea-time alone. Maurice hated being alone, even for a moment.

He paused outside the College Hall, wondering what to do. Occasionally, at this time of day, there crept into his mind, like a faint unpleasant smell, the thought of work. He’d done absolutely nothing now, since last summer. About twice a term there was a paper set, but it was easy to bring in a few cribs. As for his essays—that reminded him, he might go and fetch the essay from Farncombe’s digs. No, he hated copying out essays when alone. It was much less trouble when one was a bit tight and the room full of people.

So he decided on the gramophone shop. It was nice to pass a dreary spring afternoon there, in one of the sound-proof cabinets, playing through dozens of records and buying one or two—they were very long-suffering. He was nearly certain to meet somebody there whom he knew. He knew half Cambridge.

*   *   *

By half-past four, Maurice’s room was full of people. And Maurice came bursting in upon them in great spirits, waving a bag of cakes and the records he’d bought.

“Hullo, you chaps!” he cried—his pale face puckering up into delighted smiles and flushing deeply, so that the veins stood out on his temples: “Hasn’t the old bitch brought you any tea yet?”

He was so delighted to see them all that everybody brightened up at once, as they almost always did when Maurice appeared. They started the gramophone playing; and when the landlady came up with the tea, Maurice threw his arms round her neck:

“Darling Mrs. Brown, do you think we might have just one more little cup?”

“Oh, do let me go, Mr. Scriven, please; you’ll make me drop everything!”

“Oh, Mrs. Brown, you are marvellous!”

At tea, Farncombe and one or two others talked rowing, football, actresses and machinery. Maurice, standing at his favourite position on the fender-rail, listened seriously for a minute or two at a time, seldom longer. Even when they were discussing the merits of the Scott Squirrel, he interrupted the conversation by starting a game of lobbing screwed-up balls of paper into the hideous new pink-veined marble lamp-bowl—Mrs. Brown’s pride. And presently he picked up a golf ball from the mantelpiece and threw that. Everybody laughed at his gasp of relief when the bowl didn’t break. Encouraged, Maurice took a glass paper-weight from his desk and, weighing it in his hand, holding his breath, lobbed it very gently into the bowl. It landed—but the bowl smashed to atoms. “Oh, Goddy!” screamed Maurice. And they collected the bits hastily before Mrs. Brown appeared.