By half-past nine I had got myself in hand. I gathered my work together. Students were coming to the row of washbowls in the small compartment at the end of the senior classroom to wash their hands, and Evie gave me the smile that was to be my nourishment for three whole days as she passed with her towel and the cake of soap in the new celluloid box. Archie had been working all the evening in the typewriting-room; now was my chance, before he could make (supposing him to want to make) any appointment with her, to secure this myself, and I hurried for my hat and coat and sought him. "Ready?" I said. "Right-oh; just a minute," he replied. "I told 'em to keep my fire in--I'm going to swot like blazes to-night." "Oh no--you're coming along with me this time," I laughed. "I shall be ashamed to show my face at your place much oftener ... unless," I added lest he should shake me off, "you love me merely for what I have----" He laughed too. He was at the young and squab-like stage that takes a pride in scorning appearances, and even finds the heart more rather than less honest when the waistcoat over it is shabby. He accepted with quite a good grace, got his hat and coat, and we went out together, I giving Miss Windus an unimpeachable "Good-night" as I passed her, hardly a yard from the spot where I had peeped on her less than an hour before. The electrograph opposite my abode was an advertisement of "_Sarcey's Fluid_," some sort of a disinfectant; and as we approached it Archie looked up. "Phew!... Needs it rather, to-night, doesn't it?" he laughed. It did not seem to me to "need it" quite so badly that evening as it had on some other evenings--warm summer evenings, for example--I had known. December had come in rawly, and the chestnut stoves and baked-potato engine were out. The poorer streets have no pleasanter smell than that of baked potatoes, broken up, sprinkled with salt from the big tin caster, and closed together again like a South Sea face with a mealy smiling mouth, and I had slipped a couple of these into my pocket for our supper. I suppose Archie meant the fried fish papers in the gutters and (as we entered by my side door) the acrid smell of the public-house; but it was part of my fiendish pride to rub those things in a little that evening, and I made light of them as we mounted the stairs. "Oh, you're pampered, Master Archie," said I. "I had thought of asking you round to supper next Saturday evening--not to-morrow, a week to-morrow--but I think I shall save my hospitality." You see what I was already angling for. Well, I caught my fish. Of course he couldn't take Evie down to his folks at Guildford without my knowing of it, but I wanted to see the fashion in which he would make his avowal. We had left the carpeted corner of the stairs that the great ornamental public-house lamp illuminated brightly and were standing on the bare landing outside my room. He answered without an instant's hesitation.