Mr. Tomlinson sat ominous in his chair as he listened to Miss Tibbet's recital. "Why did you behave in that disgraceful way, Philip Massel?" "I--I--don't know, sir!" "What do you mean, you don't know?" "I don't know, sir!" "Are you sure it wasn't a pin?" "Yes, sir!" "Are you in pain?" "No, sir!" "Am I to understand that..." But Philip's shoulders were shaking. Big tears rolled down his face. He hid his face in a dirty, frayed handkerchief. He heard Mr. Tomlinson and Miss Tibbet whispering overhead. "The heat..." said one. "Yes, I should think ... the heat...." "You may go home, Philip Massel!" said Mr. Tomlinson. "Tell your mother to put you to bed at once. Say I told her she must keep you quiet. Don't come to school to-morrow if your head is aching.... And never let it happen again, young man! Understand that!" Philip withdrew. A grin mingled maliciously with his tears. A day or two later he was standing contemplatively against the playground wall during the interval, when he observed Harry Sewelson approaching. Sewelson, though he was about a year older, was in Philip's class. He lived in a draper's shop some minutes along Doomington Road. They had had no commerce hitherto. Philip made a new friend with extreme difficulty, and though he realized that there was a quality in Sewelson, a keenness in his grey eyes, which distinguished him from the rest, there was a garlic vulgarity about him, a strongly-flavoured bluster, which, he had learned from Reb Monash, was inseparable from Roumanian Jewry. "I say!" declared Sewelson, "I bet you I know what was the matter on Tuesday! I bet I know why you gave that shout!" "_Bet_ you don't!" Philip replied. He was vaguely proud of the complex of motives which had induced him to behave in so baffling a manner. "Nobody pricked you!" Sewelson asserted. "Right for once!" Philip agreed. "And you weren't ill! I bet I know!" Philip looked up curiously. "_You just wanted to!_" Sewelson whispered in a somewhat melodramatic manner. "You felt you just had to. You couldn't get away. You were sick and tired!" Philip's brown eyes looked up shyly, with a certain pleasure, with a certain distrust, into the grey eyes before him. "You're right!" said Philip. "It wasn't my fault!" "I say," Sewelson said, after a pause. "I say..." Then he paused again. "Yes?" asked Philip. "I say, what about being pals?" Philip blushed slightly. "Let's!" he said. They walked down the playground with linked arms. "Oh, yes!" accepted Philip innocently. "I _do_ think Miss Tibbet is a narky bitch!" "Carried _nem-con_!" exclaimed Sewelson, proud of his elegant introduction of a foreign tongue. CHAPTER IV