Harry Venniker advanced every week in popularity. His frank manner, his good humour, his manly disposition, won the hearts of his schoolfellows. It was a common saying that he had never been known to lose his temper. He was eminently unselfish, always ready to do a good turn and never anxious to spoil it by claiming credit for what he had done. His sense of fun was keen, and he took a leading part in the ‘larks’ of his house, though he never went the length of giving pain to boys or getting into serious trouble with his masters. He enjoyed too the conspicuous advantage of excellence in games. He had plenty of pluck, the virtue which in the schoolboy code of honour is supreme. Even in his first term his ‘runs’ and ‘charges’ on the football field excited the admiration of veteran players. But when the summer term came, and it began to be rumoured in the school that so good a left-handed bowler as he was might actually have a chance of getting into Mr. Brandiston’s house Eleven--for had not the great Stanley himself been heard to remark that ‘that young Venniker kept a good length,’ and ‘he could make the ball break both ways’?--then Harry Venniker tasted for the first time the delicious joy of fame, so dear to all finely tempered minds, but to none dearer than to minds that are young and ardent. Several boys high in the school or prominent in athletics began to take notice of him, one or two of them invited him to breakfast, and there was a general feeling in Mr. Brandiston’s house that he was ‘the coming man.’ Nor was he less a favourite with the masters than with his schoolfellows. It is true that he was not intellectually distinguished; but he was not idle, he was always pleasant and cheerful, he kept a very fair place in his form, generally somewhere about the middle, he was seldom in punishment, and his athletic distinction appealed to the sympathetic feelings of masters as well as of boys. Mr. Brandiston was obliged to own that he was a boy who would do his house honour in one of the two lines recognised by Mr. Brandiston himself. At the end of his first term at St. Anselm’s, Mr. Brandiston had written to Lord Venniker, congratulating him upon ‘the excellent start that his son had made,’ and bearing testimony that ‘his lordship had every reason to be proud of his son.’ ‘He is,’ he added, ‘a boy who works well and plays well, and I have the highest opinion of him.’ It is only fair to add that Harry retained his simplicity, and was in no sense injured by the praises showered upon him.