In these hustling times it is not always easy to get ten minutes' conversation with an acquaintance in private. There was drill in the dinner hour next day for the corps, to which Kennedy had to go directly after lunch. It did not end till afternoon school began. When afternoon school was over, he had to turn out and practise scrummaging with the first fifteen, in view of an important school match which was coming off on the following Saturday. Kennedy had not yet received his cap, but he was playing regularly for the first fifteen, and was generally looked upon as a certainty for one of the last places in the team. Fenn, being a three-quarter, had not to participate in this practice. While the forwards were scrummaging on the second fifteen ground, the outsides ran and passed on the first fifteen ground over at the other end of the field. Fenn's training for the day finished earlier than Kennedy's, the captain of the Eckleton fifteen, who led the scrum, not being satisfied with the way in which the forwards wheeled. He kept them for a quarter of an hour after the outsides had done their day's work, and when Kennedy got back to the house and went to Fenn's study, the latter was not there. He had evidently changed and gone out again, for his football clothes were lying in a heap in a corner of the room. Going back to his own study, he met Spencer. "Have you seen Fenn?" he asked. "No," said the fag. "He hasn't come in." "He's come in all right, but he's gone out again. Go and ask Taylor if he knows where he is." Taylor was Fenn's fag. Spencer went to the junior dayroom, and returned with the information that Taylor did not know. "Oh, all right, then--it doesn't matter," said Kennedy, and went into his study to change. He had completed this operation, and was thinking of putting his kettle on for tea, when there was a knock at the door. It was Baker, Jimmy Silver's fag. "Oh, Kennedy," he said, "Silver says, if you aren't doing anything special, will you go over to his study to tea?" "Why, is there anything on?" It struck him as curious that Jimmy should take the trouble to send his fag over to Kay's with a formal invitation. As a rule the head of Blackburn's kept open house. His friends were given to understand that they could drop in whenever they liked. Kennedy looked in for tea three times a week on an average. "I don't think so," said Baker. "Who else is going to be there?"