Roland sat next to Muriel and found her a delightful companion. She was at an age when school and games filled her life completely. She told Roland of a rag that they had perpetrated on their French mistress, and he recounted her the exploits of one Foster, who used to dress up at night, go down to the Eversham Arms, sing songs and afterwards pass round the hat.
Roland had his doubts as to the existence of Foster; he had become at Fernhurst one of those mythical creatures which every school possesses--a fellow who took part in one or two amusing escapades, and around whose name had accumulated the legends of many generations. His story was worth telling, none the less.
After dinner they walked out into the garden, with the chill of the autumn night in the air. It reminded Roland that his sojourn in that warmly colored life was only temporary, and that outside it was the cold, cheerless struggle for existence.
“It is so ripping this,” he said to Muriel, “and it is so rotten to think that in a few weeks I shall be sitting down in front of a desk and adding up figures.” He told her, though she was already acquainted with the facts, of how he had left Fernhurst at the end of the term, and in a few weeks would be going into a bank.
“Oh, how beastly,” she said. “I suppose you will have rotten short holidays?”
“I think it is a shame,” she said. “I am sure a boy like you ought to be leading an open-air life somewhere.”
And that night, before he fell asleep, Roland thought wistfully of the company he had met that day. It was marvelous how money smoothed everything. It was the oil that made the cogs in the social machine revolve; without it there was no rhythm or harmony, but only a broken, jarring movement. Without money he felt life must be always in a degree squalid. He remembered his own home and the numerous worries about small accounts and small expenses; he knew how it had worn down the energy of his father. He knew that such worries would never touch a girl like Muriel. How easy and good-natured all these people were; they were flowers that had been grown in a fertile soil. Everything depended upon the soil in which one was planted; the finest plants would wither if they grew far from the sunshine in a damp corner of a field.