That evening after prep I again stole out. The Bantam showed himself very impertinent--he wanted to come with me. I had great difficulty in persuading him that it wasn’t necessary. I found Fiesole in the summer-house. She was subdued and wistful, and insisted on asking questions about that nice boy she had seen with me. I told her frankly that he was engaged to my sister, and gave her a graphic account of how my father had turned him out of Pope Lane. I fear I made him seem altogether too romantic. She made careful inquiries about the appearance of Ruthita, which I took as a sign of encouragement--a foreknowledge that sooner or later I intended to ask her to become one of my family. When the bell rang for prayers and we parted, I held her hand a little longer, but experienced my old reluctance in the matter of kissing. Next morning fate played me a scurvy trick; I woke with a bad sore throat, due I suppose to my escapade of the night earlier, and was sent to the infirmary. On the evening of the day I came out, which was four days later, I was summoned after prep to report myself to the doctor. This made me late in getting to the summer-house. The bell for prayers had commenced to ring as I got there. I was climbing through the hedge when I heard footsteps on the garden path. There were two children standing hushed amid the roses, the one with face tremulously uplifted, the other looking down with eager eyes. As I watched their lips met. It was impossible for me to stir without making my presence known. One of them came bolting into me, going out by the way I was entering. We rolled over and I recognized the Bantam. Fiesole, hearing the angry voices of two boys quarreling, ran. And so I got my first experience of the lightness of woman’s affection. However, if I was seeking a revenge, I got it. Before the end of the summer term Pigtails became suspicious, and discovered the Cow in the summer-house with the fickle Fiesole. The Cow, because he was a monitor, was expelled and I was appointed in his place--Mordecai and Haman after a fashion. Fiesole, on account of her kissing propensities, was regarded as a dangerous person and sent away. I was a grown man when next I met her. CHAPTER VII--THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SPUFFLER It was during the last week of the summer term, while I was convalescing from Fiesole’s sudden exit and was beginning to forgive the Bantam his treachery, that the magic personality of George Rapson first flashed into my little world.