We did not even care to inquire particularly into the offence for which he had suffered.

But we moped and missed him at every turn, and wished the miserable term were ending instead of beginning.
This, however, is a long digression.

I sat down to write the story of my own trouble, not Browne's.

But the reader will understand now why I said that, as it was, apart from my own misfortunes, the term, which had still a month more to run when my story begins, had been a dismal one.
-- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I was wandering about the playground one frosty November morning, beginning to hope that if a frost should come we might after all get a little fun at Draven's before the holidays came, when Odger junior, whistling shrilly, crossed my path.
Odger junior was not exactly my fag, for we had no fags at Draven's, and if we had had, I had not yet reached that pitch of dignity at which one fellow has the right to demand the services of another.

Still Odger junior had, for a consideration, done a good many odd jobs for me, and I had got into the way of regarding him as a quasi-fag.
"Hullo, youngster!" said I, as we met, "there's going to be a stunning frost.