It is not the object of this story to describe in detail the progress or system of public school life. That story has often been told. One public school does not differ greatly from another in character, or sentiment, or interest; and the life that is lived in one is essentially the life of them all. I am concerned only with the strengthening or development of friendship between the two boys who are the heroes of this narrative. What is it in this life that is the secret of friendship? Is it voluntary or involuntary? Is it formed by likeness or by opposition? Does it spring up of itself? Does it need cultivation and tendance? Is it not true that there are persons whom we feel we ought to like more than we do--very estimable persons, very dutiful, but not quite those of whom we make friends? and other persons who are not free from reproach or criticism and yet for whom we cannot help in our own despite cherishing an affection? Does friendship depend upon character or upon circumstances? The one thing certain seems to be that it is not a matter of the reason. We cannot make friends at will. We may say to ourselves perhaps that we will unmake a friendship, that we will not hold intercourse with a person any more (though that too is difficult), but nobody ever yet resolved that he would be the friend of a person, whether he liked him or not, and became his friend and remained so for life. Like all the most sacred things in human experience, friendship is a boon, in some sense independent of human volition. It cannot be acquired by perseverance or resolution. God reserves it like personal beauty, like the appreciation of beautiful sounds and colours, in His own hands. It is His gift; He bestows it where He wills; we can but accept it with grateful and reverent hearts when it is given. Probably there were no two boys at St. Anselm’s whose lives might be deemed to be parted by a wider gulf than Harry Venniker and Gerald Eversley. They came from opposite poles of society. Except in the universal human functions, such as eating and drinking, and the universal experiences of life, they had no common ground. Conversation between them, apart from topics of school interest, was limited by the lack of sympathetic understanding. If the one had spoken of dances or shooting parties, or the other of Bible readings and parochial visits, he would have seemed to his companion to be living in a different world from his, and to be using a language of which he had no comprehension. And the gulf threatened to grow wider as time went on. Harry Venniker plunged more and more eagerly into the brimming waters of school life; Gerald Eversley stood trembling more and more fearfully on the bank. It was only within the walls of the room which they occupied together, that they could be said to have a common existence.