ght names, if you
please."

"No, no," said Mr. Blinkhorn, "this extreme self-depreciation is morbid,
very morbid. There was no actual vice."

"No actual vice! Why, God bless my soul, do you call ingratitude--the
basest, most unfilial, most treacherous ingratitude--no vice, sir? You
may be a very excellent young man, but if you gloss over things in that
fashion, your moral sense must be perverted, sir--strangely perverted."

"There were faults on both sides, I fear," said Mr. Blinkhorn, growing
a little scandalised by the boy's odd warmth of expression. "I have
heard something of what you had to bear with. On the one hand, a father,
undemonstrative, stern, easily provoked; on the other, a son,
thoughtless, forgetful, and at times it may be even wilful. But you are
too sensitive; you think too much of what seems to me a not unnatural
(although of course improper) protest against coldness and injustice. I
should be the last to encourage a child against a parent, but, to
comfort your self-reproach, I think it right to assure you that, in my
judgment, the outburst you refer to was very excusable."

"Oh," said Paul, "you do? You call that comfort? Excusable! Why, what
the dooce do you mean, sir? You're taking the other side now!"

"This is not the language of penitence, Bultitude," said poor Mr.
Blinkhorn, disheartened and bewildered. "Remember, you have put off the
Old Man now!"

"I'm not likely to forget _that_," said Paul; "I only wish I could see
my way to putting him on again!"

"You want to be your old self again?" gasped Mr. Blinkhorn.

"Why, of course I do," said Paul angrily; "I'm not an idiot!"

"You are weary of the struggle so soon?" said the other with reproach.

"Weary? I tell you I'm sick of it! If I had only known what was in store
for me before I had made such a fool of myself!"

"This is horrible!" said Mr. Blinkhorn--"I ought not to listen to you."

"But you must," urged Paul; "I tell you I can't stand it any longer. I'm
not fit for it at my age. You must see that yourself, and you must make
Grimstone see it too!"

"Never!" said Mr. Blinkhorn firmly. "Nor do I see how that would help
you. I will not let you go back in this deplorable way. You must nerve
yourself to go on now in the path you have chosen; you must force your
schoolfellows to love and respect you in your new character. Come, take
courage! After all, in spite of your altered life, there is no reason
why you should not be a frank