The school was assembled for prayers one Thursday morning. It was Dr. Pearson’s habit, if some extraordinary success was achieved by one of the boys, to celebrate it by granting a holiday. Generally the success which merited the holiday was known beforehand. But on this particular day the school was taken by surprise when Dr. Pearson, whose expression of face revealed his satisfaction, said after prayers, ‘I shall give a holiday to-morrow in honour of the success of one of our number in winning a Balliol scholarship; I need hardly say that I mean Eversley.’ A cheer burst from the crowded benches of the school at this announcement. It was loud and prolonged, for the holiday had not been expected. Gerald, who sat with his head buried in his hands, thought, as the cheering died away--it might be a mistaken idea, but he could not help thinking--that there was one voice even louder and more persistent than the rest, and that that voice was Harry Venniker’s. To win a holiday for the school is to win the hearts of all its members. Gerald Eversley was overwhelmed with congratulations. Masters who had seldom or never spoken to him before stopped in the street to tell him that the school had cause to be proud of him. The boys, as he passed, remarked to each other that he was ‘the cleverest chap at St. Anselm’s.’ Mr. Brandiston’s usual reserve thawed under the genial feeling that, whatever Gerald’s faults were, he had justified his scholastic life by conferring distinction on his house. Somewhat different was the language of Mr. Selby, who invited him to tea that afternoon. Mr. Selby was full of joy. He knew so well how to ‘rejoice with them that rejoice,’ as well as to ‘weep with them that weep,’ and the joy he felt in Gerald’s success beamed from his countenance; but he said it always seemed to him that success, especially when it was as great as Gerald’s, was, if rightly considered, one of the most humbling things in the world, as it laid upon the successful person such a responsibility for being worthy of it after it was won as he had been before it, and of justifying it by his after-life. Gerald had not thought of it so before, but Mr. Selby’s words were not forgotten. The old Greek adage says, ‘Call no man happy until the end.’ Happy, it might have been deemed, was Gerald now: his unpopularity gone, his favour assured, the masters and boys all courting his acquaintance. Yet success and sadness are near neighbours sometimes, and the entrance into the sanctuary of sorrow is made through the portals of honour. Gerald Eversley was entirely happy that day, but never again--save for one brief interval--was he happy afterwards. The story passes to a somewhat later time. The scene is Kestercham Vicarage.