Jeremy was miserable. He was sitting on the high ground above the cricket field. The warm summer air wrapped him as though in a cloak; at his feet the grass was bright shrill green, then as it fell away it grew darker, tumbling into purple shadow as it curved to the flattened plateau. Behind him the wood was like a wall of painted steel. Far away the figures of the cricketers were white dolls moving against the bright red brick of the school buildings. One little white cloud shaped like an elephant, like a rent torn in the blue canvas of the sky, hung motionless above his head; and he watched this, waiting for it to lengthen, to fade into another shape, formless, until at last, shredded into scraps of paper, it vanished. He watched the cloud and thought: “I’d like to roll him down the hill and never see him again.”

He was thinking of young Baltimore, who was sitting close to him. He was doing nothing but stare and let his mouth hang slackly open. Because he did nothing so often was one of the reasons why Jeremy hated him so deeply. Baltimore was not an attractive-looking boy. He was perhaps ten years of age, white faced, sandy haired, furtive eyed, with two pimples on his forehead and one on his nose. He looked as though quite recently he had been rolled in the mud. And that was true. He had been.

From near at hand, from the outskirts of the wood, shrill cries could be heard singing:

Jeremy, hearing these voices, made a movement as though he would rise and pursue them, then apparently realized his impotence and stayed where he was.

“Beasts!” said Baltimore, and suddenly broke into a miserable crying, a wretched, snivelling, gasping wheeze.

Jeremy looked at him with disgust.

“You do cry the most awful lot,” he said. “If you didn’t cry so much they wouldn’t laugh at you.”

He gloomily reflected over his fate. The summer term, only a week old, that should have been the happiest of the year, was already the worst that he had known at Thompson’s.

On his arrival, full of health, vigour and plans, old Thompson had taken him aside and said:

“Now, Cole, I’ve something for you to do this term. I want you to be kind to a new boy who has never been away from home before and knows nothing about school life. I want you to be kind to him, look after him, see that no one treats him harshly, make him feel that he is still at home. You are getting one of the bigger boys here now, and you must look after the small ones.”

Jeremy was not displeased when he heard this. It gave him a sense of importance that he liked; moreover he had but recently read “Tom Brown,” and Tom, whom he greatly admired, had been approached in just this way about Arthur, and Arthur, although he had seemed tiresome at first, had developed very well, had had a romantic illness and become a first-class cricketer.

His first vision of Baltimore had been disappointing. He had found him sitting on his play-box in the passage, snivelling in just that unpleasant way that he had afterwards made so peculiarly his own. He told Jeremy that what he wanted to do was to go home to his mother at once, that his name was Percy, and that he had been kicked on the leg twice.

“You mustn’t tell the others that your name’s Percy,” said Jeremy, “or you’ll never hear the last of it.”

It appeared, however, from certain cries heard in the distance, that Baltimore had already done this.

Jeremy wondered then why he had been selected for this especial duty. He was not by any means one of the older boys in the school, nor one of the more important. He foresaw trouble.

Baltimore had been informed that Jeremy was to look after him.

“Mr. Thompson says you’re to look after me,” he said, “and not let the boys kick me or take things out of my play-box; and if they do I’m to tell Mr. Thompson.”

Jeremy’s cheeks paled with horror as he heard this declaration.

“Oh, I say, you mustn’t do that,” he declared. “That would be sneaking. You mustn’t tell Thompson things.”

“Why mustn’t I?” asked Baltimore, producing a large cake of chocolate from his play-box and proceeding to eat it.

“Oh, because—because—sneaking’s worse than anything.”

“My mother said I was to,” said Baltimore.

“And you mustn’t talk about your mother either,” said Jeremy, “nor any of your people at home.”

“Why mustn’t I?” asked Baltimore.

“Because they’ll rag you if you do.”

Baltimore nodded his head in a determined manner.

“I will if they kick me,” he said.

That evening was an unhappy one. Jeremy, kept by the matron over some silly business connected with his underclothes, came late into the dormitory to discover a naked Baltimore being beaten with hair-brushes. That was a difficult moment for him, but he dealt with it in the traditional manner of school heroes. He rushed into the midst of the gang, rescued Percy and challenged the room. He was popular and known for a determined fighter, so there was some laughter and jeering; but Baltimore was allowed to creep into his bed.

Next morning the school understood that young Stocky Cole had a new protÉgÉ and that it was that terrible new boy Pimply Percy. Jeremy’s best friend, Riley minor, spoke to him seriously about it.

“I say, Stocky, it isn’t true that you’ve taken up with that awful new kid?”

“Thompson says I’ve got to look after him,” Jeremy explained.

“But he’s the worst of the lot,” Riley complained disgustedly.

“Well, I’ve got to anyway,” said Jeremy shortly.

The sad part of it was that Baltimore was by no means grateful for Jeremy’s championship.

“You might have come in earlier,” he said. “I don’t call that looking after me.”

He now followed Jeremy like a shadow, a complaining, snivelling, whining shadow.

Jeremy expostulated.

“Look here,” he said. “We needn’t be together all the time. If you’re in trouble or anything you just give me a shout. I’m sure to be round somewhere.”

But Baltimore shook his head.

“That isn’t what Mr. Thompson said,” he remarked. “He said that you’d look after me. But how can you look after me if you’re not there?”

“He didn’t mean us to be together the whole time,” said Jeremy.

The thing was impossible. He could keep his own small fry in order, although the jeers and insults of those who had until this term been his admiring friends were very hard to bear. But what was he to do, for instance, about Cracky Brown? Cracky was captain of the cricket, thirteen years of age and going to Eton next term. He was one of three heroes allowed a study, and he was fagged for by several of the new boys, including Baltimore. He had already given young Baltimore several for breaking a cup and saucer. How could Jeremy, aged ten and a half, and in the lower fourth, go up to Cracky and say: “Look here, Brown, you’ve got to leave Baltimore alone,” and yet this was exactly what Baltimore expected Jeremy to do. Baltimore was a boy with one idea.

“Mr. Thompson said you were to see they didn’t hit me,” he complained.

“Don’t call him Mr. Thompson,” urged Jeremy. “Nobody does.”

Here on the hillside Jeremy moodily kicked the turf and watched the shredding cloud. Another week of this and he would be more laughed at than any other boy in the school. Had it been the winter term his prowess at football might have saved the situation, but he had never been very good at cricket, and never would be. He hated it and was still in third game among all the kids and wasters.

It would all have been so much easier, he reflected, had he only found Baltimore possible as a companion. But he thought that he had never loathed anyone so much as this snivelling, pimply boy, and something unregenerate in him rose triumphant in his breast when he saw Baltimore kicked—and this made it much more difficult for him to stop the kicking.

What was he to do about it? Appeal to Thompson, of course, he could not. He had promised to do his best and do his best he must. Then the brilliant idea occurred to him that he would write to Uncle Samuel and ask his advice. He did not like writing letters—indeed, he loathed it—and his letters were blotched and illegible productions when they were finished, but at least he could make the situation clear to Uncle Samuel and Uncle Samuel always knew the right thing to do.

At the thought of his uncle a great wave of homesickness swept over him. He saw the town and the High Street with all the familiar shops, and the Cathedral, and his home with the dark hall and the hat-rack, and Hamlet running down the stairs, barking, and Mary with her spectacles and Uncle Samuel’s studio—he was even for a moment sentimental over Aunt Amy.

He shook himself and the vision faded. He would not be beaten by this thing. He turned to Baltimore.

“I’m not going to have you following me everywhere,” he said. “I’m only looking after you because I promised Thompson. You can have your choice. I’ll leave you alone and let everyone kick you as much as they like, and then you can go and sneak to Thompson. That won’t help you a bit; they’ll only kick you all the more. But if you behave decently and stop crying and come to me when you want anything I’ll see that none of the smaller boys touch you. If Cracky wants to hit you I can’t help it, but he hits everybody, so there’s nothing in that. Now, what is it to be?”

His voice was so stern that Baltimore stopped snivelling and stared at him in surprise.

“All right,” he said. “I won’t follow you everywhere.”

Jeremy got up. “You stay here till I’ve got to the bottom of the hill. I’ll sit next you at tea and see they don’t take your grub.”

He nodded and started away. Baltimore sat there, staring with baleful eyes.