"Mind you're at the station in time," he had said; "and, I say! please don't call me Lionel if there are any of our fellows about, it sounds so kiddish. Just call me Sutcliffe, and I'll call you sir--as you're so old--like we do the masters. Oh yes! and there's something I want you to buy for me, very particularly--it's for my study. I've got a study this term, and I share it with a fellow named Gammage. He's an awfully good egg!" "What extraordinary language schoolboys do manage to get hold of," I thought as I re-read the letter while bowling along in the cab on my way to the station, which, a very few minutes later, came in sight, the platform being crowded with parents, relatives and friends waiting to meet the train by which so many Marlburians were travelling. There was a shriek from an engine, and a rattle and clatter outside the station, as the train, every window filled with boys' excited faces, came dashing up to the platform. "There's my people!" "There's Tom!" "Hi! hi! Here I am!" "There's the pater with the trap!" "Hooray!" To the accompaniment of a babel of cries like these, and amidst an excited scramble of half-wild schoolboys, I at last discovered my small cousin. "There he is!" he said, pointing me out to a young friend who was with him; and coming up he hurriedly offered his hand. "How are you, _Sutcliffe_?" I asked, remembering his letter. "All right, thanks," he replied. "This is Gammage. I wanted to show you to him. He wouldn't believe I had a cousin as old as you are. See, Gammage?" Gammage looked at me and nodded. "'Bye, Sutcliffe; good-bye, sir," said he, raising his hat to me and hurrying off to his "people." "I say! don't forget the rug, Sutcliffe!" he bawled over his shoulder before finally disappearing. "Oh no! I say, sir! _That's_ what I want to ask you about," said Sutcliffe, scrambling into the taxi, and settling himself down with a little nod of satisfaction. "What?" I inquired, as we bowled out of the station. "Why, a rug for my--our--study," said the boy. "Gammage has bought no end of things to make our room comfortable, and they've sent me up some pictures and chairs and things from home--and--it would be awfully decent of you if you'd buy me a rug to put in front of the fire-place. It's rather cheek to ask, but you generally give me something when I come over to see you, and I arranged with Gammage to say I'd rather have that than anything. What sort of a shop do you get rugs at? Couldn't we get it on our way now, and then it would be done with? I might forget to ask you about it later on." "What sort of a rug do you want?" I asked, as the taxi turned into Tottenham Court Road. "Oh, I don't know, sir. Any sort of an ordinary kind of rug will do. There's some in that window; one of those would do."