But God had not heard, and both things had begun to happen. As he sang, his voice had cracked on the high notes, and now that he looked at his face in the glass, he saw the golden hairs just sprouting again along his upper lip. He had secretly shaved them off a month before, with a razor found in his aunt’s attic. She was a parson’s wife, and people were always bringing her their rubbish for her next jumble sale. Whenever Orvil went to stay with her, he climbed up to the attic, where this stuff was stored, andhelped himself. His aunt knew nothing about it; he always hid the things he took.

On his last visit he had found the old-fashioned cutthroat razor, and one of those boxes which cricketers wear for protection. He wondered that anyone should send such a thing to a jumble sale; then he guessed that the person was a woman and that she had not known what it was, just as he had not known until he had asked a master at his preparatory school.

He had picked the two things up and run down with them to his room. There, he had strapped on the much too large box. The kid-leather, blackened and polished with sweat, felt like a hard human hand against the tender skin on the inside of his legs. He stood like this in front of the glass and started to shave his lip with the old razor.

Afterwards, he went downstairs, still with the box on underneath his clothes. As he talked to his aunt and his cousins, he had an inner glow of excitement and satisfaction. He felt very safe.

He had taken the razor back to school last term and had used it twice, secretly. He had locked himself into the upstairs lavatory (the only one with a door), and then, standing on the seat, had dipped the razor into the tank, knocking it against the ball-cock. He had shaved without a mirror, feeling very sensitively along his wet lip, with one finger, before he laid the razor on it . . .

Now, as Orvil gazed at himself in the mirror, he wondered if he should use the razor again. He was afraid of making the hairs grow stronger and thicker by constant shaving; but on the other hand, he enjoyed scraping them off. He decided to do nothing this morning, telling himself that nobody else would notice the slight golden down.

He also tried to persuade himself that nobody else would notice the rings under his eyes. They seemed to jump out at him from the glass; he could not see his face for them. This was because other boys at school had sometimeslaughed and said meaningly, “Pym, you do look shagged this morning. What have you been up to?”

He knew what they were hinting at, and this made him tremble with righteous indignation; for he could not help the lines under his eyes. They were due to the anxiety and excitement which often kept him awake at night, and to the nature of his eyes, which so quickly grew tired.

He hoped that other people, if they saw the rings, would realize this. He was terrified that they would not—that they would be lewd and superstitious like the boys at school.

Orvil took up his towel and went to the bathroom. Outside the door was a slot-machine stocked with various medicines: Aspirin, Quinine, Cascara Sagrada. Orvil had money now; for the day before, his father had suddenly slipped all his small change into his son’s pocket as they sat close together in the car. Orvil, made drowsy by the motion of the car, had jerked away nervously, uncertain of his father’s sudden movement; then he had felt the hard half-crowns and pennies digging into his thigh.

He went back to his room to collect three sixpences. He put one into each of the slots and took the three small packets with him into the bathroom. He read all the directions while the room filled with steam from the water. Lying back in his bath, he swallowed one tablet from each phial. He felt much better after that—quite peaceful and soothed.

After breakfast, Orvil lost himself on the way back to his room. A maid found him wandering along the dark crooked passages. She was a nice intelligent girl, very female.