hine to Sefton.

The latter looked at him with straight, penetrating gaze.

"They tell me you've given up cricket again. Why?"

"I don't care for it, sir, never did. Everybody seems to have a notion
that nothing can be of any use, or even right, but that confounded--I
beg your pardon, sir--cricket and football. A fellow is never to be
allowed to take his own line."

"Yes, but it's a good wholesome rule that if a fellow can't take his own
line he'd better adapt himself to the lines of others. Eh?"

Haviland did not reply. He merely smiled, cynically, disdainfully. Mr
Sefton, watching his face, was interested, and more sorry for him than
his official position allowed him to say. He went on:--

"Don't mope. There's nothing to be gained by it. Throw yourself into
something. If one has lost a position, it is always possible to regain
it. I know, and some others know, your influence has always been used
in the right direction. Do you think that counts for nothing? Eh?"

"It hasn't counted for much, sir, in a certain quarter," was the bitter
reply. "It isn't the position I mind--I don't care a hang about it,
sir!" he burst forth passionately, "but to be stuck down in these three
beastly fields, in the middle of a crowd all day and every day--I'd
rather have been expelled at once."

"Don't be an ass, Haviland," said the master, stopping short--for they
had been walking up and down--and peering at him in his quaint way. "Do
you hear? Don't be an ass."

This commentary, uttered as it was, left no room for reply, wherefore
Haviland said nothing.

"Why don't you go to the Doctor and ask him to remove your `gates'?"
went on Mr Sefton.

"I wouldn't ask _him_ anything, sir."

The tone, the expression of hatred and vindictiveness in the young
fellow's face, almost startled the other. As a master, ought he not to
administer a stern rebuke; as a clergyman, was it not his duty to reason
with him? But Mr Sefton, no part of an ass himself, decided that this
was not the time for doing anything of the sort.

"You talk about not caring if you were expelled, Haviland," he went on.
"How about looking at it from your father's point of view? How would he
feel, d'you think, if you ended up your school life with expulsion?
Eh?"

He had struck the right chord there, for in the course of their
conversations he had gathered that the young fellow was devotedly
attached to his father, whom he regarded as about a hundre