In the following week an Eton friend came to stay, and now at least there was someone to play with. Jim Airedale was an engaging and good-looking boy, devoted to Dennis, and even in this eclipse, the two of them, with all the resources of Stanier to chose from, might entertain themselves with considerable enjoyment. But all went more grievously for Dennis than ever. Colin appeared to take a great fancy to his friend, and at dinner, on the day of his arrival, talked to him delightfully, with occasional interspersions of snubs for Dennis. No one--as Dennis was bitterly aware--knew so well the road to a boy’s heart; he made Jim at ease in a couple of minutes, set him chattering in a couple more, and it was a hilarious meal that followed. After dinner he set Dennis down to play that weary whist, and took the other boy off to play billiards. When the whist was over, Dennis joined them and marked for them. Then at bedtime Colin took Jim up to his room, to see that everything was comfortable, and lingered there talking, while next door Dennis, half-undressed, sat on his bed, waiting for those merry sounds to cease. When all was quiet, he slipped out of his room to have a few words with Jim, and perhaps Colin was waiting for that, for as he passed his door, it opened quietly and there his father stood. “Hullo, where are you going?” he asked. Something in Dennis seemed to strain almost to breaking-point at the cold hostility of his tone. “I’m just going to see Jim,” he said. “Well, then, you had better just go back to your room again,” said Colin. Next morning he took Jim off in the two-seater to play golf--Dennis would lend him his clubs--and they came back late for lunch, better friends than ever. Afterwards there was some rabbit-potting, at which Jim excelled, and Colin found occasion to say to Dennis, “I wonder if you’ll ever learn to shoot like that.” And there were dreadful games of lawn tennis, in which Colin, saying that he was the worst player of the four, must play with Jim, against Violet and Dennis. He really was the best, so of course they won. All this was sufficient to turn the boy’s head, and Jim became slightly condescending to his friend. But when he said to Dennis: “I say, you’re father’s pretty rough on you sometimes,” with the intention of being consolatory and friendly, he found he had strangely miscalculated. Up went Dennis’s chin. “Rough on me?” he said. “What on earth do you mean? He’s perfectly ripping to me.” Finally, on the last evening of that nightmare week, Colin made it impossible for Jim, after a decent allowance of champagne at dinner, to refuse a couple of glasses of port. He became rather tipsy, and when, with a rolling eye and a menacing sense of rising nausea, he hurried away to his room, Colin watched him go with a shrug of the shoulders. “Nice sort of friends you bring to the house, Dennis,” he said. That seemed to round off the visit very pleasantly.