But when he had drawn the curtains, and pulled his chair up to the hot-water pipes, so that he could rest his feet on them, and divided his attention between “Ravenshoe” held in one hand (he had got to where Gus and Flora were naughty in church), and tea in the other, things seemed to cheer up a little. Outside evidently the weather had got worse, for the wind squealed round the corner of the house, and on his panes, behind the thick red curtains he could hear the muffled patter of the driven snow. And, after all, there was a bright side to snow, for it would mean that there would be prayers in the house to-night, and he would not have to turn out to go to chapel. And Maddox would be back on Saturday, and it was Thursday evening already. Also Bags had written to him from the sick-room, saying that he was better, and expected to be out again by Sunday. David’s spirits began to improve, and he kicked off his shoes, in order to enjoy a greater intimacy with the hot-water pipes, and burst into a shout of laughter as Flora announced that she had left her purse on the piano. . . . It would have been a poor heart that did not rejoice next morning, for during the night the wind dropped and so smart a frost had set in that the snow lay hard and crusted on the ground, and it would be clearly possible to go tobogganing on the slopes of the down at twelve. At breakfast, moreover, there was a postcard for him from Frank, with a highly coloured photograph of the great quadrangle at Trinity on the back, and a couple of lines to say he would be back by mid-day on Saturday, and that Cambridge was a topping place. It warmed David’s heart to think that Frank should have remembered him, and, with the prospect of tobogganing at twelve, and the cheer of the frosty-shining sun, his spirits went up to a pitch of inexpressible buoyancy as he slid along the trodden path to go to ten-o’clock school. Paths had been swept in schoolyard between the various class-rooms, but the rest of the broad space lay white and untrodden. David got there while it still wanted five minutes to ten, and hung about with a few friends outside the class-room door till the hour should strike. There was a quiet exchange of small snowballing, furtively delivered, for it was very strictly forbidden in the quadrangle, and David had just lobbed one not bigger than a racquet-ball with extraordinary success, just between the collar and neck of Joynes, who had not the vaguest idea who had done this. Now he was moulding another larger one in his hand, with an absent eye in Joynes’s direction, and his shoulders trembling with suppressed laughter, for Joynes’s attempts to scoop the snow out were really very funny, when Gregson came up to him. “Jolly good shot,” he said. “I saw. But I bet you can’t chuck a snowball right across the quad.” “Bet-you-I-can,” said David all in one word.