At last he was frightened at these intervals, because he seemed to realize then how dismal and unhappy it all was, and also how dangerous it was. Once, during one of these clear moments, he was standing, a melancholy figure, by the iron gate, looking down the Brown Hill road, and Garden Minimus passed him. Perrin stopped him, and then when he saw the boy's round face and shining eyes, a little frightened now, and the mouth quivering a little, he had nothing to say. At last he said, “Oh!—Ah!—Garden—I haven't seen much of you lately. How do the exams go?” Perrin had an absurd impulse to take the boy by the arm and ask him to be kind to him. He was so dreadfully unhappy. But Garden was very frightened; he choked a little in his throat, and his eyes moved frantically down the white road as though appealing for help. “Oh! very well, sir, thank you, sir—I—I could n't do the geography this morning, sir.” There was a long pause. Garden gave frightened glances up and down the road. “When do you go for—um, ah,—your holidays, Garden?” Garden looked up in Mr. Perrin's face, and suddenly, young though he was, felt that Mr. Perrin was, as he put it afterwards, “awfully sick about something—not ratty, you know, but jolly near blubbing.” He had, with his friends, noticed that Perrin was “jolly odd” during these days, but now this thought struck him to the extinction of every other feeling. He had a sudden desire to help—after all, Old Pompous had been beastly decent to him—and then there came an overwhelming sensation of shyness, as though his feminine relations had suddenly appeared and claimed him in the company of his contemporaries. He looked down, rubbed one boot against the other, and then suddenly, with a murmured word about “having to meet some fellows—beastly late,” was off. Perrin watched him go and then turned slowly back towards the school buildings. The shadows were creeping about him again. He felt that the other Mr. Perrin was behind him. He walked stealthily, a little as a cat prowls.... About this time he took great curiosity in Traill's bedroom. He had never been inside it—he knew only that plain brown door with marks near the bottom of it where the paint had been scratched. But he sat now in his room and thought about it. He sat in a chair by the windows and looked across the room at his own door, at the square black lock and the shining brass handle. It was of course very easy to turn, and then he would be inside. It would be interesting to be inside—he would know then where the bed was, and the washing-stand, and the chairs... it might be useful to know. He went to his own door and opened it, and looked very cautiously down the passage; there was no one there—it was all very silent. The sun of the December afternoon flooded the cold passage, and from downstairs the shouts of some boys floated up.... There were no other sounds.