now," said he, as he lounged against his tutor's
mantelpiece one evening. "I don't see why a fellow of nineteen can't be
trusted to behave himself without being tied up in this way. It's my
impression I know as well how to behave now as I am likely to do when I
am twenty-one."

"That is a reflection in advance on my dealings with you during the next
two years," said the tutor with a grin, as he swung himself half round
on the piano-stool so as to get his hand within reach of the keys.

"I don't mind _you_," said the boy, "but I hope this Cousin Edward, or
whoever he is, won't try to `deal' with me too."

"I am informed he is virtue and amiability itself," said the tutor.

"If he is, all serene. I'll take my walks abroad with one little hand
in yours, and the other in his, like a good boy. If he's not, there'll
be a row, Armstrong. In anticipation of which I feel in the humour for
a turn at the foils."

So they adjourned into the big empty room dedicated to the manly sports
of the man and his boy, and there for half an hour a mortal combat
raged, at the end of which Roger pulled off his mask and said, panting--

"Where did you learn foils, Armstrong? For a year I've been trying to
run you through the body, and I've never even yet scratched your arm."

"I fenced a good deal at Oxford."

"Ah! I wonder if I shall ever go to Oxford? This will cuts me out of
that nicely."

"Not at all. How?"

"Well, you can't be my tutor here while I'm an undergraduate there, can
you? I'd sooner give up Oxford than you, Armstrong."

"Kind of you--wrong of you too, perhaps. But at twenty-one you'll be
your own master."

"I may not be in the humour then. Besides, I shall have my hands full
of work here then. It's hard lines to have to kick my heels in idleness
for two years, while I've so many plans in my head for improving the
place, and to have to ask your leave to spend so much as a halfpenny."

"It is rather tragic. It strikes me, however, that Cousin Edward will
be the financial partner of our firm. I shall attend to the literary
part of the business."

"And poor mother has to umpire in all your squabbles. Upon my word, why
couldn't I have been treated like a man straight off, instead of being
washed and dressed and fed with a spoon and wheeled in a perambulator by
three respectable middle-aged persons, who all vote me a nuisance."

"In the first place, Roger Ingleton, I am not yet middle-aged. In the
sec