CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.
A CLIMAX TO EVERYTHING.
Among the few Willoughbites who took no interest at all in the juniors' match was Gilks.
It was hardly to be wondered at that he, a schoolhouse boy, should not concern himself much about a contest between the fags of Welch's and Parrett's.

And yet, if truth were known, it would have been just the same had the match been the greatest event of the season, for Gilks, from some cause or other, was in no condition to care about anything.
He wandered about listlessly that afternoon, avoiding the crowded Big, and bending his steps rather to the unfrequented meadows by the river.
What he was thinking about as he paced along none of the very few boys who met him that afternoon could guess, but that it was nothing pleasant was very evident.
At the beginning of this very term Gilks had been one of the noisiest and liveliest fellows in Willoughby.

Although his principles had never been lofty, his spirits always used to be excellent, and those who knew him best could scarcely recognise now in the anxious, spiritless monitor the companion whose shout and laugh had been so familiar only a few months ago.
Among those who met him this afternoon was Wibberly.

Wibberly, like Gilks, felt very little interest in the juniors' match.

He was one of the small party who yesterday had come in for such a smart snubbing from Bloomfield, and the only way to show his sense of the ingratitude of such treatment, especially towards an old toady like himself, was to profess no interest in an event which was notoriously interesting the Parretts' captain.
So Wibberly strolled down that afternoon to the river, and naturally met Gilks.
The two were not by any means chums--indeed, they were scarcely to be called friends.