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The Joyous Wayfarer CHAPTER I A Fool and Some of his Folly

I first met Kenneth Louis St. Cyprien Massingdale - "a name," its owner will tell you, "that bespeaks the most unseemly irresponsibility on the part of the godparents" - at Cambridge, where he was a year my junior. He was then, as he is now, very far removed from the conventional type; he did not pose at all; was moved to much mirth at the talk and manners of the body of self-proclaimed aesthetes, at the time fairly numerous; and said little or nothing about painting, neither announcing nor suggesting that he could paint or had ever wished to do so. He was very popular - indeed, I can scarcely imagine him otherwise - but he was not the man with whom the average undergraduate could arrive at any real intimacy. Outside of rowing, which is the only athletic performance I have ever seen him take part in, he had little in common with most of us. His ways had not been ours, and most men, I am inclined to think, saw that his interest in the affairs of the place was carefully assumed, which discovery is likely to arouse suspicion in any community. I do not fancy that,