As was their usual arrangement, George was going to stay with the Fitzwilliams for the first part of the mid-year holidays, but Aubrey saw little of him in that hectic final week of term. George was busy with cornet practice for the mid-year concert, and study, for once, had also kept his head down. Aubrey was again in the thick of everything, trying to devote his energies to a thousand different commitments. He found himself rehearsing lines for his part as the defence barrister in the school play while trying to memorise formulae for his Advanced Magic exam at the same time as he was practising his googly in the nets with the First XI. On top of this, his batting had dropped off and he had to spend some hours refining his late cut. Aubrey had always been at the top of his class. It wasn't simply because of native intelligence, but because he approached his studies in a rigorously organised way, almost as if study was a military campaign. He mapped out his work, broke subjects down into sections and segments, organised his attack on each one, took notes that were concise but included everything important.
