It was at this time that he came to adore little Pamela, whose bright prattle and pretty, loving ways with him soothed his sore heart. But it was only now and then that he could forget himself, playing with her. The other boys were brutally scornful of his taste for the companionship of a baby.
He did not go to Hayslope again until a year later. By that time he was a schoolboy himself. He had thought a good deal about his cousin Hugo, and about Fred Comfrey, in the interval, and come to the conclusion, assisted by an intimate friend of his own age to whom he had disclosed the matter, that he had been a bally ass to be put down by them.
He had entered the republic of his school with unhappy anticipations of the life he would lead there, with forty tyrants to domineer over him instead of two. If it had not been for his experience with Hugo and Fred, he would have escaped months of anticipatory dread. But his fears proved groundless. This was a very good school for small boys, with a headmaster whose outstanding aim was to make friends of them all and to keep them happy. He was helped by his wife, who loved children and had none of her own. The forty boys were her family, and outside school hours they used the whole house as if it were their home. Under this happy rule there were no awkward fences for a little boy new to school life to surmount. He was welcomed as a member of the family, and one who was expected to do it credit. Everything was done to bring out whatever originality of character he had in him. The elder boys, taking their tone from the headmaster, his wife and assistants, were kind and protective. The only objection to the system was that a new boy of self-assertive habits occasionally made himself something of a nuisance. But the standards and ideals of school life soon told on all but the incorrigibles; the headmaster knew when and how to exercise severity on the rare occasions on which it was required; and if a boy had not submitted himself to the tone of the school by the end of his first year his parents were asked to remove him. That sometimes made trouble for the headmaster, but he was content to put up with that now and then for the sake of his beloved school.
Norman, after a pause of bewilderment, expanded under this treatment. He was gay and bright and bubbling over with life; he was quick with his work and had an aptitude for the pursuits that are valued among boys. He was made much of from the first, but his native modesty prevented his being spoilt.
It was this agreeable modesty of his that had led him to knuckle under to Hugo and Fred the year before, and they had taken advantage of it. He went down to Hayslope with his father and mother for Christmas with the determination to knuckle under in nothing, and rather enjoyed, though with some tremors, the prospect of making it quite plain where he stood, and where he intended to stand for the future. He had learnt to box a little at school, and thought it might come in useful. He didn't suppose that he was capable of taking on Hugo and Fred together, but if it should be necessary he was not averse from trying.
To his immense surprise, however, Hugo greeted him affably, and seemed to have forgotten the disagreeables of the previous visit. They played together with no more than the normal amount of friction between small boys, and settled their differences as they arose without coming anywhere near to blows.
Then Fred Comfrey, who had spent Christmas away from home, came on the scene. Now was the time for the three of them to take stock of one another. So far, Norman had been content to make friends with an apparently much improved Hugo, without bothering himself about whether he would have liked him if he had seen him in contact with other boys. In the give and take of school life a boy finds his level very quickly. He is known through and through, and sized up with an accuracy seldom at fault, though the rule by which he is measured is more rigid than any that is applied in after life. Outside, the rule is somewhat relaxed. Boys not acceptable to their fellows may find themselves liked by older people, and show themselves in an altogether different light. The ordinary courtesies of life, disregarded at school, have some sway. There is the softening influence of feminine and family society. A truce is called, and allowances unconsciously made. So it was with Hugo and Norman, who were not made to run together, but managed to find some community of interest in the pursuits of holiday time.
But with the advent of the third party new adjustments had to be made. There was a pause of observation, and then the struggle began.
The Rector's son was a stocky, dark-haired boy of considerable strength for his age. He was already at one of the minor public schools, where they took boys from the age of eleven. His manners were rough, as his school was, and his ideals did not include that of any sort of courtesy, though he was retiring enough in the company of his elders.
Hugo was as tall as Fred, but not nearly so broad or strong. He was dark, too, and good-looking in boy fashion, though not remarkably so. His manners were agreeable in grown-up society, and Norman had lately found them inoffensive when not affected by outside influences. In a very short time it was to be proved whether he would keep up his new-found amity with his cousin or put himself on Fred's side against him. His character was weak, and a year before Fred had played upon it, ostensibly following his lead, because with unpleasant precocity he recognized his superiority of place, but actually pushing him into the attitude that suited his inclinations.
Now came Norman's second surprise. During the pause of observation which came before the three of them settled down to the respective places which their characters and experience had earned for them, Fred seemed to realize that Norman partook in some measure of Hugo's superiority. It would have been marked enough to anybody who had seen the three of them together. The frankness of demeanour which had been encouraged by Norman's short experience of admirably conducted school life formed a significant contrast with Fred's clumsy diffidence in presence of his elders and his sniggering audacities when released from restraint. He was an unpleasant boy even at that early age, and Norman instinctively disliked him from the first moment of the second period of intimacy, and was inclined to hug his dislike.
It was he who made the breach that presently came. Otherwise, Fred would have kept the peace, and they would have got on as long as they were together without an open quarrel.
Three-year-old Pamela was the cause of it. Norman had found her more entrancing than ever, and had made no attempt to hide his love for her during the week before Fred had come on the scene. Hugo had grumbled sometimes when Norman had wanted to play with her, and he had wanted him to do something else, but there had been no repetition of the contempt that this unmanly preference for the society of a baby had previously called forth. Hugo was rather fond of his little sister, though he never put himself out to amuse her.
On the third day after Fred's arrival he came up to the hall immediately after breakfast, all agog for the game devised the evening before.
It had been snowing hard, then and through the night, and now it was a glorious, sparkling morning, with the garden and the park and the woods all muffled in white, under a frost which bound the whole landscape into gleaming, motionless beauty. The boys had found a pair of Canadian snowshoes in a lumber-room. They were to use them for a game of Indian trackers in the woods, and had agreed upon their several parts, not without some dispute, but on the whole amicably. Hugo and Fred were eager to be off at once. So was Norman, but he was rolling on the floor of the hall when Fred arrived, Pamela pursuing him with shrieks of laughter, and did not at once respond to Fred's urgings. When they were repeated with impatience he responded still less. He wasn't going to be ordered about by Fred, and his latent hostility impelled him to make it plain to him that the more insistent the summons the less quickly would it be obeyed. When Hugo added his impatient word, he said: "All right, you go out and begin, if you're in such a hurry. I'll come when I'm ready."
The two boys flung off