Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up.

Four are dead, twenty-three others are scattered about in obscure country places; lost for want of news, as they say at the private inquiry offices.

Larive makes up the twenty-eight.

I used to admire him, when we were low in the school, because of his long trousers, his lofty contempt of discipline, and his precocious intimacy with tobacco.

I preferred him to the good, well-behaved boys.