He walked slowly across the park towards them, stepping rather carefully in the footmarks that one of them had made in the snow. When he got within hailing distance of them he called out: "Haven't you tried the snowshoes yet?"
There was no reply. They had their heads together and Fred was eyeing him balefully.
When he got near them Fred rose from his seat, and said: "Look here, we're not going to stand this any longer."
"Well, then sit it," replied Norman, rather pleased with the readiness of the repartee.
Fred looked uglier than usual, but his next speech was more in the tone of reason than Norman had expected. "You're the youngest of the three of us," he said. "You're not going to keep us hanging about waiting for you when we've all settled on something to do. The cheek of it!"
Norman glanced at Hugo, who still sat on the log. There was nothing in his face yet to show whether he was hostile or not. He looked more interested than anything, and it came home to Norman that if he got the better of Fred, Hugo need no longer be feared as an adversary.
"Well, I'm sorry I kept you waiting," said Norman. "But I'm here now, so let's begin."
Fred was still inclined for argument. "I'm the oldest," he said, "but we're both here to play with Hugo, I suppose. As you're staying with him, naturally he doesn't like to make too much fuss over your cheek. But—"
"He didn't mind making a fuss last year," interrupted Norman, "and you sucked up to him and helped him. I was a bally ass to stand it then, and I'm not going to stand it now."
Fred made a threatening gesture. "Sucking up!" he repeated. "You'd better be careful what you say."
Hugo still held aloof, hunched up on the log, with his hands in his pockets. Somehow Norman felt it necessary to bring him in. "He does suck up to you," he said. "I'm not going to, you know."
Hugo stirred uneasily, and said: "It's quite true what he says. It's cheek keeping us waiting like this for a quarter of an hour."
"To play with a baby," added Fred with scorn. It was the charge, so frequently brought, which had hurt him the year before. But it hurt him no longer. "I like playing with little Pam," he said. "So does Hugo sometimes, when you're not here. You'd like it too, if you weren't such a dirty scug."
This was the turning-point. Fred made another gesture of attack, but did not follow it up. If he had done so the battle would have been short and sharp, and whoever had won—it must have been he—bad blood would have been let off and the three boys would have settled down together. Instead, he turned to Hugo. "Really, that's a bit too much!" he said angrily. "Shall I teach him his lesson?"
Hugo rose. "Oh, let's chuck it," he said. "What's the good of scrapping when there's a game to play?"
They played their game, which none of them enjoyed. The contest had seemed to be quite indecisive, but Norman had won it hands down. It was Hugo, the weakest character of the three, who was the decisive factor. Fred deferred to him, and lost ground by doing so. Norman made no effort to gain ascendancy over him, being content with equal terms, but his ascendancy none the less became marked. Because he disliked Fred, finding something in him antagonistic to all the clean ideals in which he had been reared, Hugo came rather to dislike him too. Fred met this attitude with deprecation, which made matters worse. He began to be cold-shouldered, and towards the end of the holidays his society was as much as possible dispensed with.
The next time that Norman came to Hayslope, in the summer, Fred had made his ground good again, having become necessary to Hugo in the meantime. There was no quarrel this time, but Norman never liked Fred, and their intimacy was only on the surface. He didn't like Hugo much either, or wouldn't have liked him if he had known him at school among a lot of other boys. But there was some sense of relationship and he was part of Hayslope Hall and all its keen delights.
As the years of boyhood went by, the cousins remained friends in some sort. But Norman's lead became more pronounced. Hugo went to Harrow, which was his father's school. William Eldridge by this time had left the Bar to engage in commerce, and was already beginning to make money. Norman was sent to Eton. When he had been there a year his foot was on the ladder. He was one of those boys to whom success in school life comes naturally, while Hugo was a potential rotter, destined to remain in the ruck, unless he should emerge from it for some discreditable reason.
When Norman was fifteen and Fred nearly eighteen, the antagonism between them at last found its vent. Fred had grown into a lout of a boy, whose only saving grace was athleticism. He was already in his school eleven and fifteen, and Norman, though coming on well, was as yet far below those altitudes. Fred, uplifted by his successes, was not so careful now to conciliate him. He encouraged the worst side of Hugo, and had established an influence over him while Norman had been off the field. This always happened, but now Hugo did not gradually come over to Norman, as he had done before. His adolescence had brought him to Fred's unsavoury views of life and conduct. Fred was his chosen companion at Hayslope, in a way that Norman would never be.
Norman, an attractive, light-hearted boy, in the early years of his school life, was not without experience of evil, to which he had shut his eyes as much as possible. The talk of the two older boys offended and troubled him, but he did not at first combat it. He was parted from them by more than years. Hitherto they had all been boys together; now the other two were essentially men, of the baser sort, and he remained a boy, with a boy's clean distaste for what was as yet none of his business. He fell silent when they pursued their promptings, and presently began to withdraw himself from them.
Pamela had reached the age of nine. She was an engaging little sylph-like creature, with laughing, mischievous ways, and a bright intelligence beyond her years. She was quite fit to be a companion to Norman, and he took pleasure in her society. Judith was only a year younger, and companionable, too, in a more serious way. Alice and Isabelle were five and four. All of them loved Norman, who played childish games with them, and was entirely happy in doing so. But this brought on him some return of the treatment by which he had been made so unhappy during his first intercourse with Hugo and Fred together. It did not make him unhappy now, but contemptuous of them. Still, there was the fact that Norman's childhood still hung about him, while they had got rid of theirs; and no boy of fifteen likes having his youth emphasized, especially by those, rather older, with whom he desires to be on equal terms. Fred and Hugo held this advantage over him, which delayed the outbreak for some time.
It came suddenly when it did come, and its beginnings were almost a repetition of the quarrel of years before. Norman was wanted to do something with the other two, and was not to be found. They came upon him by chance, with Pamela, in a retired part of the garden. They were sitting on a bench deep in conversation, for they found plenty to talk about that interested them, and Pamela was often very serious in these confabulations, when she laid aside the quick activities of her nature and was content to sit quietly and talk to a friend.
The discovery was made an occasion of whooping triumph by Fred and Hugo, as if they had surprised some secret. Pamela flamed out against them for disturbing her and Norman, and told them to go away and leave them alone. Their interference stung Norman to a cold fury that was quite a new experience to him, and beyond what was natural to his years. He stood up with a white face and confronted Fred, whose eyes flickered for a moment before him. "I'll just go and get my cap," he said, "and then I'll come with you. Wait for me down by the wood."
So he got Pamela away. She expostulated indignantly as they crossed the lawn together. "I hate Fred Comfrey," she said. "Why do you