“It is strange you should have mentioned it,” he said.  “There was one boy, and,” he added slowly, “one peculiar incident.  It occurred in my last year at Portora.  The boy was a couple of years younger than I—­we were great friends; we used to take long walks together and I talked to him interminably.  I told him what I should have done had I been Alexander, or how I’d have played king in Athens, had I been Alcibiades.  As early as I can remember I used to identify myself with every distinguished character I read about, but when I was fifteen or sixteen I noticed with some wonder that I could think of myself as Alcibiades or Sophocles more easily than as Alexander or Caesar.  The life of books had begun to interest me more than real life....

“My friend had a wonderful gift for listening.  I was so occupied with talking and telling about myself that I knew very little about him, curiously little when I come to think of it.  But the last incident of my school life makes me think he was a sort of mute poet, and had much more in him than I imagined.  It was just before I first heard that I had won an Exhibition and was to go to Trinity.  Dr. Steele had called me into his study to tell me the great news; he was very glad, he said, and insisted that it was all due to my last year’s hard work.  The ‘hard’ work had been very interesting to me, or I would not have done much of it.  The doctor wound up, I remember, by assuring me that if I went on studying as I had been studying during the last year I might yet do as well as my brother Willie, and be as great an honour to the school and everybody connected with it as he had been.

“This made me smile, for though I liked Willie, and knew he was a fairly good scholar, I never for a moment regarded him as my equal in any intellectual field.  He knew all about football and cricket and studied the school-books assiduously, whereas I read everything that pleased me, and in my own opinion always went about ‘crowned.’” Here he laughed charmingly with amused deprecation of the conceit.

“It was only about the quality of the crown, Frank, that I was in any doubt.  If I had been offered the Triple Tiara, it would have appeared to me only the meet reward of my extraordinary merit....

“When I came out from the doctor’s I hurried to my friend to tell him all the wonderful news.  To my surprise he was cold and said, a little bitterly, I thought: 

“‘You seem glad to go?’

“‘Glad to go,’ I cried; ’I should think I was; fancy going to Trinity College, Dublin, from this place; why, I shall meet men and not boys.  Of course I am glad, wild with delight; the first step to Oxford and fame.’

“‘I mean,’ my chum went on, still in the same cold way, ’you seem glad to leave me.’

“His tone startled me.

“‘You silly fellow,’ I exclaimed, ’of course not; I’m always glad to be with you:  but perhaps you will be coming up to Trinity too; won’t you?’