“Sorry, Bags,” he said at length, having tied the ends of the broken bootlace together.
Bags was the most amiable of mankind, and besides, this was David.
“Right oh,” he said at once. “But do tell me what’s up, if I can be of any use.”
“Good old Bags, but you can’t; thanks awfully. Don’t ask me anything about it, if you don’t mind.”
Suddenly the fact of the parcel at the lodge which he had forgotten to bring down for Maddox presented itself. He felt that he couldn’t see Maddox again just at once.
“I say, there is one thing you might do,” he said. “I wish you’d come up to college with me, and get that parcel of Maddox’s. I should be frightfully obliged if you would. I’m going to tea with a fellow there, and I should have to go up and down twice.”
Bags felt that, if David offered this as an explanation of his ill-humour, it was a pretty thin one.
“Oh, is that all you’re so sick about?” he asked.
David was ready by now, and without another word he marched to the door. He would have to bring the parcel up himself, but he was determined to get somebody else to take it to Maddox’s study.
“Wait a second,” said Bags in a slightly injured tone. “Of course I’ll come up with you.”
“You are a brick,” he said. “But don’t ask me anything more. It isn’t anything. I expect I’ve made a fool of myself.”
“Shouldn’t wonder a bit,” said Bags pacifically.
Maddox had gone straight back from the bath-room to his study, without filling his kettle. He sat for ten momentous minutes in front of his fire without doing anything, without thinking even, but looking with open eyes, so to speak, on himself. All these weeks that intense friendship which was springing up between himself and David had been splendidly growing, and till now his influence over him had been exerted entirely for David’s good. He had constantly shielded him, as on the night when he had found Hughes sitting on his bed, from all that could sully him, he had checked any hint of foul talk in David’s presence, for, of all his lovable qualities, there was none so nobly potent to the elder boy than David’s white innocence, his utter want of curiosity about all that was filthy. It didn’t exist for him, but the danger of it (though, thank God, it was passed) he knew that he himself had brought near to him. . . . Then he got up and looked at himself in the mirror above his mantel-piece, hating himself.