All this, however, the fact that his new friends had so at once and unreservedly welcomed him, had made it so tremendously easy for him, seemed to Graham to be merely natural, and thus, in a sense, it probably defeated his father’s main object in sending him to school at all; that object being, presumably, to familiarise him with the ways of actual life. From Graham, somehow, actual life was as far away as ever. It was all so bright, so charming; every one was so ‘decent’ to him, so nice; how in the world was he to know that ‘niceness’ wasn’t a thing to be counted upon; and that he, Graham Iddesleigh, wonderfully had been made an exception of? There seemed in fact to be hardly a boy who was not anxious to help him, who did not take a pleasure in watching him drop into the ways of the place; while such things as he really did do well――swimming, diving, running, leaping, translating Greek――were elaborately overpraised. The masters liked him also; and, what was more significant, the older boys, who ignored his contemporaries, took an interest in him, asked him to their studies, looked after him, wanted him to do the school credit. He was happy. The days passed very quickly. Nevertheless, he had not quite learned to live the life the others lived, and there were times when he felt homesick. One thing in particular he noticed (though he had made too many new friends to find much leisure for regret), and that was just that the old playmate of his dreams had ceased to visit him, that he could no longer even call up very clearly his image, remember what he was like. It was as if the change which had come into his everyday world had extended on into the dusky ways of sleep, and though he did not dwell upon it at all, yet he felt, obscurely, that something that had been had ceased to be, and that there was a blank, a void in his existence, which none of the many new pleasures and interests in his life would ever be able to fill. III On a fallen stone, under the shelter of a rough, loosely-piled wall, Graham sat. All around him the landscape stretched, field after field, bleak and bare in the cold wintry light of a February afternoon, while dark heavy clouds blew like puffs of smoke across the dull grey sky. From time to time a passing breath of wind shivered through the dry grass, and from time to time a pale yellowish light, like a dim reflection of some wan remote sunshine, washed through the clouds, brightening the country for a few moments. The boy’s chin was supported between his hands, and he gazed out across the monotonous fields and naked hedges, listlessly, a little sadly, thinking of home, of the past. He felt tired; there was a dampness, a heaviness, in the air, which weighed upon his spirit; and something of his dejection was visible in the mere drooping of his head.