"I'm going to." Gilly nodded his head in fierce agreement. "Don't you worry. He needn't think I'm any ole butler." "Le's see you make him." At this point the darn fool entered in person and included the crowd in one of his irritating smiles. Two boys said, "'Lo, Mer'dith"; the others gave him a chilly glance and went on talking to Gilly. But Samuel seemed unsatisfied. "Would you mind not sitting on my bed?" he suggested politely to two of Gilly's particulars who were perched very much at ease. "Huh?" "My bed. Can't you understand English?" This was adding insult to injury. There were several comments on the bed's sanitary condition and the evidence within it of animal life. "S'matter with your old bed?" demanded Gilly truculently. "The bed's all right, but---" Gilly interrupted this sentence by rising and walking up to Samuel. He paused several inches away and eyed him fiercely. "You an' your crazy ole bed," he began. "You an' your crazy---" "Go to it, Gilly," murmured some one. "Show the darn fool--" Samuel returned the gaze coolly. "Well," he said finally, "it's my bed--" He got no further, for Gilly hauled off and hit him succinctly in the nose. "Yea! Gilly!" "Show the big bully!" "Just let him touch you--he'll see!" The group closed in on them and for the first time in his life Samuel realized the insuperable inconvenience of being passionately detested. He gazed around helplessly at the glowering, violently hostile faces. He towered a head taller than his roommate, so if he hit back he'd be called a bully and have half a dozen more fights on his hands within five minutes; yet if he didn't he was a coward. For a moment he stood there facing Gilly's blazing eyes, and then, with a sudden choking sound, he forced his way through the ring and rushed from the room. The month following bracketed the thirty most miserable days of his life. Every waking moment he was under the lashing tongues of his contemporaries; his habits and mannerisms became butts for intolerable witticisms and, of course, the sensitiveness of adolescence was a further thorn. He considered that he was a natural pariah; that the unpopularity at school would follow him through life. When he went home for the Christmas holidays he was so despondent that his father sent him to a nerve specialist. When he returned to Andover he arranged to arrive late so that he could be alone in the bus during the drive from station to school. Of course when he had learned to keep his mouth shut every one promptly forgot all about him. The next autumn, with his realization that consideration for others was the discreet attitude, he made good use of the clean start given him by the shortness of boyhood memory. By the beginning of his senior year Samuel Meredith was one of the best-liked boys of his class--and no one was any stronger for him than his first friend and constant companion, Gilly Hood. II