House
cap. Tester was not improved by his friendship with Stewart, and the
pity was that he was really clever. He could always argue his case.

"I never asked to be brought into this world," he said, "I am just
suddenly put here, and told to make the best of things; and I intend to
make the best of things. I am going to do what I like with my life.
Wrong and right are merely relative terms. They change to fit their
environment. Baudelaire would not have been tolerated in the Hampstead
Garden Suburb; Catullus would not have been received in Sparta. But at
Paris and Rome customs were different. We only frame philosophies to
suit our wishes. And I prefer to follow my own inclinations to those of
a sham twentieth-century civilisation."

Gordon did not like this; but if one lives daily in the company of a man
who is clever and a personality, one is bound to look at life, at times,
at any rate, through his spectacles. Gordon began to look on things
which he once objected to as quite natural and ordinary.

"I say, Caruthers, I hope you don't mind clearing out of here for a
bit," Tester would say. "Stapleton is coming in for a few minutes. You
quite understand, don't you?"

As soon as we begin to look on a thing as ordinary and natural, we also
begin to think it is right. After a little Gordon ceased to worry
whether such things were right or wrong. It was silly to quarrel with
existing conditions, especially if they were rather pleasant ones.
Gordon had a study with Tester till the end of the summer.

One day, towards the end of the Easter term, Gordon asked Tester, rather
shyly, if he would leave him alone a little. "I've often cleared out for
you, you know."

"Of course, that's quite all right, my dear fellow. Any time you like, I
understand!" Tester smiled as he walked down the passage.

But during the winter term Gordon worried about little except football;
when he was not playing, he was ragging. Form he looked on as a glorious
recreation. He was learning more than he ever learned afterwards without
making much effort. Macdonald was a scholar; he did not teach people by
making them work, he taught them by making it impossible for them to
forget what he told them. No one who has ever been through the Upper
Fifth at Fernhurst would have the slightest difficulty in writing a
character sketch of any English king, even though he might never have
read a chapter about him. Macdonald made every man in history a living
cha