Mike

From this point onwards Mike was out of the conversation altogether.  Bob and Firby-Smith talked of Wrykyn, discussing events of the previous term of which Mike had never heard.  Names came into their conversation which were entirely new to him.  He realised that school politics were being talked, and that contributions from him to the dialogue were not required.  He took up his magazine again, listening the while.  They were discussing Wain’s now.  The name Wyatt cropped up with some frequency.  Wyatt was apparently something of a character.  Mention was made of rows in which he had played a part in the past.

“It must be pretty rotten for him,” said Bob.  “He and Wain never get on very well, and yet they have to be together, holidays as well as term.  Pretty bad having a step-father at all—­I shouldn’t care to—­and when your house-master and your step-father are the same man, it’s a bit thick.”

“Frightful,” agreed Firby-Smith.

“I swear, if I were in Wyatt’s place, I should rot about like anything.  It isn’t as if he’d anything to look forward to when he leaves.  He told me last term that Wain had got a nomination for him in some beastly bank, and that he was going into it directly after the end of this term.  Rather rough on a chap like Wyatt.  Good cricketer and footballer, I mean, and all that sort of thing.  It’s just the sort of life he’ll hate most.  Hullo, here we are.”

Mike looked out of the window.  It was Wrykyn at last.

CHAPTER III MIKE FINDS A FRIENDLY NATIVE

Mike was surprised to find, on alighting, that the platform was entirely free from Wrykynians.  In all the stories he had read the whole school came back by the same train, and, having smashed in one another’s hats and chaffed the porters, made their way to the school buildings in a solid column.  But here they were alone.

A remark of Bob’s to Firby-Smith explained this.  “Can’t make out why none of the fellows came back by this train,” he said.  “Heaps of them must come by this line, and it’s the only Christian train they run,”

“Don’t want to get here before the last minute they can possibly manage.  Silly idea.  I suppose they think there’d be nothing to do.”

“What shall we do?” said Bob.  “Come and have some tea at Cook’s?”

“All right.”

Bob looked at Mike.  There was no disguising the fact that he would be in the way; but how convey this fact delicately to him?

“Look here, Mike,” he said, with a happy inspiration, “Firby-Smith and I are just going to get some tea.  I think you’d better nip up to the school.  Probably Wain will want to see you, and tell you all about things, which is your dorm. and so on.  See you later,” he concluded airily.  “Any one’ll tell you the way to the school.  Go straight on.  They’ll send your luggage on later.  So long.”  And his sole prop in this world of strangers departed, leaving him to find his way for himself.

There is no subject on which opinions differ so widely as this matter of finding the way to a place.  To the man who knows, it is simplicity itself.  Probably he really does imagine that he goes straight on, ignoring the fact that for him the choice of three roads, all more or less straight, has no perplexities.  The man who does not know feels as if he were in a maze.

Mike started out boldly, and lost his way.  Go in which direction he would, he always seemed to arrive at a square with a fountain and an equestrian statue in its centre.  On the fourth repetition of this feat he stopped in a disheartened way, and looked about him.  He was beginning to feel bitter towards Bob.  The man might at least have shown him where to get some tea.

At this moment a ray of hope shone through the gloom.  Crossing the square was a short, thick-set figure clad in grey flannel trousers, a blue blazer, and a straw hat with a coloured band.  Plainly a Wrykynian.  Mike made for him.

“Can you tell me the way to the school, please,” he said.

“Oh, you’re going to the school,” said the other.  He had a pleasant, square-jawed face, reminiscent of a good-tempered bull-dog, and a pair of very deep-set grey eyes which somehow put Mike at his ease.  There was something singularly cool and genial about them.  He felt that they saw the humour in things, and that their owner was a person who liked most people and whom most people liked.

“You look rather lost,” said the stranger.  “Been hunting for it long?”

“Yes,” said Mike.

“Which house do you want?”

“Wain’s.”

“Wain’s?  Then you’ve come to the right man this time.  What I don’t know about Wain’s isn’t worth knowing.”

“Are you there, too?”

“Am I not!  Term and holidays.  There’s no close season for me.”

“Oh, are you Wyatt, then?” asked Mike.

“Hullo, this is fame.  How did you know my name, as the ass in the detective story always says to the detective, who’s seen it in the lining of his hat?  Who’s been talking about me?”

“I heard my brother saying something about you in the train.”

“Who’s your brother?”

“Jackson.  He’s in Donaldson’s.”