Even Tony’s friends occupied but a small place in Finch’s consciousness. He was grateful to Kit for his protection against Ducky Thornton and his gang of tormentors, but the only real admiration he had for Kit was because he possessed qualities—Finch could not have named them—that had induced Tony to choose him for a friend. Occasionally Tony and Jimmie would have their _protégé_ in Number Five study, but on these occasions Finch seemed to suffer so much from shyness that they did not long attempt to repeat them. Mr. Morris watched the process with inward approval and outward indifference. His own advances toward Finch had been received in a manner that gave him little encouragement. He was sorry for the boy, and he was proud of Tony’s efforts to help him on and bring him out, but even his sanguine optimism and unselfish good will failed to convince itself that the Head had been wise in bringing Finch to Deal. As for Doctor Forester, with the best intentions in the world, he had few opportunities of seeing the boy intimately, and he trusted absolutely to Morris as being the one who could do the most and the best for him. Number Five study Standerland had become during the winter term the sanctum of a privately published and privately circulated magazine, issued weekly as a rule, in pamphlet form under the title of _The Spectacle_. The inspiring genius, editor-in-chief, business manager, printing department and reportorial staff was Jimmie Lawrence. Jimmie had always had a literary turn, and usually had received A’s for his weekly themes in English from Jack Stenton, who combined with athletic prowess a genuine appreciation for good literature. In addition to required work for the masters he had written yards of short stories, poems, plays, essays and the like for the waste-paper basket and his secret scrap-book. Jimmie was likewise a great reader and he had taken more kindly than the majority of his classmates to the Sir Roger de Coverly papers from _The Spectator_ that Stenton had inflicted on the Fifth Form that year. He was able to appreciate the genial sympathy and quiet humor of the Eighteenth Century essayists, and more than once he had dipped his pen in ink to attempt a crude imitation of them. Practice improved his style. He had himself a fund of subtle humor that was becoming more and more evident as he matured, for it was a humor that had found little opportunity for expression in the crude horseplay and practical joking of the Lower School. One afternoon as he was planning an essay in the Addisonian vein and style, it suddenly occurred to him that there was a fund of material for such treatment in the actual world about him. He chose little Beverly, a fledgeling master, cock-sure and sophomoric, as the subject for his first serious essay in the comic, and achieved, in his own opinion, such a success that he read his paper that evening to Tony.