Kennedy always enjoyed going home, but, as he travelled back to Eckleton on the last day of these summer holidays, he could not help feeling that there was a great deal to be said for term. He felt particularly cheerful. He had the carriage to himself, and he had also plenty to read and eat. The train was travelling at forty miles an hour. And there were all the pleasures of a first night after the holidays to look forward to, when you dashed from one friend's study to another's, comparing notes, and explaining--five or six of you at a time--what a good time you had had in the holidays. This was always a pleasant ceremony at Blackburn's, where all the prefects were intimate friends, and all good sorts, without that liberal admixture of weeds, worms, and outsiders which marred the list of prefects in most of the other houses. Such as Kay's! Kennedy could not restrain a momentary gloating as he contrasted the state of affairs in Blackburn's with what existed at Kay's. Then this feeling was merged in one of pity for Fenn's hard case. How he must hate the beginning of term, thought Kennedy. All the well-known stations were flashing by now. In a few minutes he would be at the junction, and in another half-hour back at Blackburn's. He began to collect his baggage from the rack. Nobody he knew was at the junction. This was the late train that he had come down by. Most of the school had returned earlier in the afternoon. He reached Blackburn's at eight o'clock, and went up to his study to unpack. This was always his first act on coming back to school. He liked to start the term with all his books in their shelves, and all his pictures and photographs in their proper places on the first day. Some of the studies looked like lumber-rooms till near the end of the first week. He had filled the shelves, and was arranging the artistic decorations, when Jimmy Silver came in. Kennedy had been surprised that he had not met him downstairs, but the matron had answered his inquiry with the statement that he was talking to Mr Blackburn in the other part of the house. "When did you arrive?" asked Silver, after the conclusion of the first outbreak of holiday talk. "I've only just come." "Seen Blackburn yet?" "No. I was thinking of going up after I had got this place done properly." Jimmy Silver ran his eye over the room. "I haven't started mine yet," he said. "You're such an energetic man. Now, are all those books in their proper places?" "Yes," said Kennedy. "Sure?" "Yes." "How about the pictures? Got them up?" "All but this lot here. Shan't be a second. There you are. How's that for effect?" "Not bad. Got all your photographs in their places?" "Yes." "Then," said Jimmy Silver, calmly, "you'd better start now to pack them all up again. And why, my son? Because you are no longer a Blackburnite. That's what." Kennedy stared.