Lessons in Discovery Read Online Free PDF

own rooms ever since…well, ever
    since we began to visit each other. For reading or chess, or tea and buns,” he added with a degree of haste.
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    Lessons in Discovery
    “Never anywhere else?” It was as if Orlando had to relearn
    all the rules of their relationship, as he had learned the sacred rules of mathematics as a boy.
    “Nowhere else in college or in the town. On holiday we
    relaxed our regulations, and at my parents’ house as well. But in the university and SCR we are always Dr. Coppersmith and Dr.
    Stewart.”
    “Thank you…Jonty.” Orlando said it hesitatingly, making
    the vowel sound long and languorous, reminding Jonty of just
    how he’d spoken the name when they’d been intimate.
    “My pleasure, Orlando.” They finished their port and Jonty
    escorted his friend home to his own rooms, seeing him safely
    through the door but not entering himself. That particular
    invitation would have to wait.

    Orlando didn’t immediately turn in. He sat by his own fire,
    contemplating the flames, as he had sat alone many an evening
    since coming to St. Bride’s. Now he’d visited Stewart’s set for a drink and was apparently a regular guest there. He never used to visit any of the other fellows in their rooms, and no one had been allowed past the portals of his, but perhaps this was another rule which had to be learned anew. With Dr. Stewart—Jonty, how
    pleasant that name sounded—as part of his life, the world had to be viewed afresh.
    He recalled Jonty’s impersonation of him at their first
    meeting and he knew it would have been correct; he remembered
    clearly what he’d been like a year back. He wouldn’t be like that now, he was certain, and that was one more piece of evidence that 1906 had been a watershed year. He was becoming increasingly
    convinced that something out of the ordinary had happened to
    him, something which had a lasting effect, but Stewart had given no indication of what that had been. Perhaps the man didn’t know.

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Chapter Three
    Orlando sat by his desk, coffee and rolls to hand and Miss
    Peters’ papers next to them. He was enormously grateful that
    she’d hunted out this little puzzle for him, being a man who liked to think—there had been too much time recently for
    contemplation and only two subjects for consideration. One was
    what had happened to him over the past year, another was the fact that his room didn’t seem to be a refuge from the world anymore.
    There were distinct impressions left that someone else might visit it, at least on occasions.
    Which brought him immediately to the second point for
    consideration—Dr. Stewart. Orlando wondered whether it was
    normal, when regarding a friend, to be quite so obsessed about
    him as he seemed to be. He’d eagerly awaited the man’s visits to sick bay and in between had thought of him often. Almost all the time, if he was being honest. Jonty was a great mystery, garrulous about so many things, yet there seemed to be whole areas upon
    which he seemed reluctant to expound. Irrespective of this, he was a constant source of joy and entertainment, the like of which
    Orlando couldn’t at any point remember in his “old life”.
    He’d begun to construct a timeline of the past twelve
    months, not just in his head but on paper too, put together from what he’d read in the newspapers and in university publications.
    And from the endless chatter that had proceeded from his friend.
    It had been an incident-packed time— could he really have started playing bridge on a regular basis, and at another college? —but Lessons in Discovery
    he got no clues as to this significant event, if one there was.
    Perhaps it had been linked to his close involvement, twice over, with violent death.
    Now he’d been given another possible murder to set his
    mind to. Once he’d had his breakfast, Orlando’s first trip of the morning was to the college library to borrow what was