“And the funniest thing of all,” said Roland, “is to think that if I hadn’t caught the three-thirty from Waterloo instead of the four-eighteen, none of this would have happened. I shouldn’t have met that blighter Howard, nor gone out with those girls; and, even so, none of it would have happened if I had taken my footer boots down to be mended, as I ought to have done, on a Sunday afternoon instead of loafing in my study. One can’t tell what’s going to be a blessing till one’s done with it. If I hadn’t had that row I should never have met you and I should never have met Muriel.” And he paused, wondering what would have happened to him if he had caught the four-eighteen and taken his boots down to be mended. He would have stayed on another year at school; he would have been captain of the house; he would have gone up to the ’Varsity. He would have had a good time, no doubt, but where would he be now? Probably an assistant master at a second-rate public school, an ill-paid post that had been given to him because he was good at games. Probably also he would be engaged to April, and he would be making desperate calculations with account books to discover whether it was possible to marry on one hundred and fifty pounds a year. “That row,” he said, “was the luckiest thing for me that ever happened.” And they sat for a while in silence pondering the strange contradictions of life, pondering also the instability of human schemes. One might plan out the future, pigeon-hole it, have everything arranged as by a machine, and then what happened? Someone caught a train at three-thirty instead of at four-eighteen, or was too lazy to take his football boots down to be mended on a wet afternoon, and the plans that had been built up so elaborately through so many years were capsized, and one had to begin again. “And it’s so funny,” Roland said, “to think of the fuss they made at Fernhurst about a thing like that--just taking a girl out for a walk, and you’d think I’d broken the whole ten commandments, and all the talk there was about my corrupting the pure soul of Brewster.” Gerald broke into a great laugh. “The pure soul of Brewster!” he said. “My lord! if you’d known what he was like after he’d been in the house a term. He’d have taken a blooming lot of corrupting then. Gawd, but he was a lad!” And Gerald supplied some intriguing anecdotes of Brewster’s early life. “He was a lad!” And Brewster’s name started a train of associations, and Roland asked Gerald whether he had heard of Baker. “Baker? Baker?” Gerald repeated. “No. I can’t say I ever remember hearing anything about him. He must have been after my time.”