Allow me to introduce Mr Halliday," said the organist to George.
Halliday! Wasn't that a familiar name to me?
Was it possible?
This fine fellow, then, was no other than Jim Halliday, whom I had last seen as a boy on the steps of Randlebury, with his chum Charlie Newcome, waving farewell to Tom Drift.
Ah, how my heart beat at being thus once more brought back into the light of those happy days by this unexpected meeting! My master by no means shared my delight at the incident.

He had always shrunk from acquaintanceships among his fellow-collegians.

With none, hitherto, but the organist had he become familiar, and that only by virtue of an irresistible common interest.

His poverty and humble station forbade him to intrude his fellowship on the clannish gentry of Saint George's, and certainly his cravings for hard study led him, so far from considering the exclusion as a hardship, to look upon it as a mercy, and few things he desired more devoutly than that this satisfactory state of affairs might continue.
I do not say George was right in this.

Sociability is, to a certain extent, a duty, and one that ought not without the soundest reason to be shirked.