Boycotted | Page 5

swing. As for football, hockey, paper-chasing, and the other school
sports, I was, of course, excluded both by my own pride and the action
of the school.
In fact, Draven's never pulled together so well at anything as they did at
boycotting me during those few weeks. Their discipline was splendid.
They all seemed to know exactly what to do and what not to do when I
appeared on the scene, and any hopes I had of winning over a few
stragglers to my side vanished before the blockade had lasted a week.
At first I didn't mind it. My mettle was up, I was excited, and the
consciousness that I was unjustly treated carried me through.
But in a few days the novelty began to wear off, and I began to get tired
of my own company. I still made the most of my elbow-room in class
and at meals, but it ceased to be amusing.
I tried to work hard in my study every evening, and to persuade myself
I was glad of the opportunity of making up for lost time; but somehow
or other the distant sounds of revelry and laughter made Livy and
Euclid more dull and uninteresting than ever. I tried to hug myself with
the notion of how independent I was in school and out, how free I was
from bores, how jolly the long afternoon walks were with no one
hanging on at my heels, how dignified it was to hold up my head when
all the world was against me. But spite of it all I moped.
Greatly to my disgust, Draven's did not mope. As I sat down in my
study, or wandered, still more solitary, in the crowded playground, it
seemed as if all the school except myself had never been in better
spirits. Fellows seemed to have shaken off the cloud which Browne's
expulsion had left behind. The football team was better than it had been
for a year or two, and I overheard fellows saying that the "Saturday
nights" were jollier even than last winter. In fact, it seemed as if, like
Jonah, the throwing of me overboard had brought fine weather all
round.
Still I was not going to give in. Draven's should be ashamed of itself

before I met it half way!
So I watched with satisfaction my face growing pale day by day, and I
aided this new departure in my favour by eating less than usual, giving
up outdoor exercise, and staying up late over my lessons.
I calculated that at the rate I was going I should be reduced to skin and
bones by the end of my term, and perhaps at my funeral Draven's
would own they had wronged me. At present, however, my pallor
seemed to escape their observation, and as for my late hours, all the
good they did me was an imposition from Mr Draven for breaking
rules.
As the days went on, I seemed to have dropped altogether out of life. I
might have been invisible, for anything any one seemed to see of me.
Even the masters appeared to have joined in the conspiracy to ignore
me, and for a whole week I sat at my solitary desk without hearing the
sound of my own voice.
My readers may scoff when I tell them that at the end of a fortnight I
felt like running away. The silence and isolation which had amused me
at first became a slow torture at last, and, poor-spirited wretch that I
was, my only comfort was in now and then crying in bed in the dark.
I made up for this secret weakness by putting on a swagger in public,
and rendered myself ridiculous in consequence. Draven's could hardly
help being amused by a fellow who one day slunk in and out among
them self-consciously pale, black under the eyes, with a hacking cough
and a funereal countenance, and the next blustered about defiantly and
glared at every one he met.
The fact was, having despaired of making a friend, my one longing
now was to make an enemy. I would have paid all my pocket-money
twice over for a quarrel or a fight with somebody. But that was a luxury
harder to get even than a friendly word.
I tried one day.

I was mooning disconsolately round the playground, when I met young
Wigram, the most artless youngster in all Draven's.
"You played up well in the second fifteen on Saturday," I said, as if I
had spoken to him not five minutes ago, whereas, as a matter of fact,
the sound of my own voice gave me quite a shock.
"Yes," began he, falling into the snare, "I was lucky with that run up
from--er--I--beg pardon--good-bye," and he bolted precipitately.
It