aid slow and level: "Look at that
bounder, he's screwed!" Val turned to look. The 'bounder' had
disengaged his arm, and was pointing straight at them. Crum's voice,
level as ever, said:

"He seems to know you!" The 'bounder' spoke:

"H'llo!" he said. "You f'llows, look! There's my young rascal of a
son!"

Val saw. It was his father! He could have sunk into the crimson carpet.
It was not the meeting in this place, not even that his father was
'screwed'; it was Crum's word 'bounder,' which, as by heavenly
revelation, he perceived at that moment to be true. Yes, his father
looked a bounder with his dark good looks, and his pink carnation, and
his square, self-assertive walk. And without a word he ducked behind the
young woman and slipped out of the Promenade. He heard the word, "Val!"
behind him, and ran down deep-carpeted steps past the 'chuckersout,' into
the Square.

To be ashamed of his own father is perhaps the bitterest experience a
young man can go through. It seemed to Val, hurrying away, that his
career had ended before it had begun. How could he go up to Oxford now
amongst all those chaps, those splendid friends of Crum's, who would know
that his father was a 'bounder'! And suddenly he hated Crum. Who the
devil was Crum, to say that? If Crum had been beside him at that moment,
he would certainly have been jostled off the pavement. His own
father--his own! A choke came up in his throat, and he dashed his hands
down deep into his overcoat pockets. Damn Crum! He conceived the wild
idea of running back and fending his father, taking him by the arm and
walking about with him in front of Crum; but gave it up at once and
pursued his way down Piccadilly. A young woman planted herself before
him. "Not so angry, darling!" He shied, dodged her, and suddenly became
quite cool. If Crum ever said a word, he would jolly well punch his
head, and there would be an end of it. He walked a hundred yards or
more, contented with that thought, then lost its comfort utterly. It
wasn't simple like that! He remembered how, at school, when some parent
came down who did not pass the standard, it just clung to the fellow
afterwards. It was one of those things nothing could remove. Why had
his mother married his father, if he was a 'bounder'? It was bitterly
unfair--jolly low-down on a fellow to give him a 'bounder' for father.
The worst of it was that now Crum had spoken the word, he realised that
he had lon