LINKLATER
I
Linklater came to school after Pip,—one year, to be precise,—but by the time that both had attained to the dignity of seniors they were firm friends. They were a curiously assorted couple. Pip at the age of eighteen was as inscrutable and reserved as ever, though his popularity with the school was unbounded, and his influence, when he chose to exert it, enormous. He had already been a member of the Eleven for three years, and should by rights this year have been captain. But alas! though Pip had been duly washed by the high tides of promiscuous September promotions out of the all-glorious Lower Shell into the Upper Shell, and from the Upper Shell by the next inundation into the Fifth, he had not as yet qualified for a Monitorship.
Linklater was a handsome, breezy, rather boi
