rs Penny outlined his scheme--Penny loved
scheming, moving forces, and holding their reins.

It was a marvellous scheme. We were to leave undone our Preparation
for the Roman History lesson, and, when Fillet told us the answers,
we were to write them down and credit ourselves with the marks.
"It's not cheating," explained our leader in his speech (and we
were all very glad, I think, to hear that it wasn't cheating),
"because it's not an effort to take an unfair advantage of each
other. It's just a cordial understanding, by which we all lessen one
another's burdens.

"I and my executive," continued Penny, "have all the details worked
out to a nicety. Here is a table for the whole term, showing how
many marks each worker will give up week by week. It is so graduated
that the clever fellows will end up at the top, and those who would
naturally slack will end up at the bottom. My executive has decided
that Doe is about the brainiest, so he comes out first"--blushes
from Doe--"and I myself am willing to stand at the bottom."

By this revelation of astonishing magnanimity Penny came out of the
transaction, as he did out of most things that he put his hand to,
with nothing but credit.

For half a term this comfortable scheme ran as merrily as a stream
down hill. And then a strange thing happened to me. I was talking
one afternoon to Penny on the absurdities of the Solar System, when
I became conscious that my mind had closed upon seven words: "That
Rupert, the best of the lot."

"That Rupert, the best of the lot." What on earth had resuscitated
those words? I politely bowed them out and continued my
conversation. But the phrase had entered like a bailiff into
possession of my mind. Even as I put it from me, believing it would
be lost in the flow of an absorbing conversation, I knew that there
had appeared upon the horizon a cloud no bigger than a man's hand.

"That Rupert, the best of the lot." The words, as first told to me
by my mother, had been the dying words of my grandfather, Colonel
Rupert Ray, with which he asked repeatedly for his dead son, my
father. So the words were uttered by the first Rupert Ray, applied
to the second, and recalled by the third at a most inopportune
moment. And the third would have bowed them out. Why? Because he was
a cheat? No--let us not be ridiculous--because he was in the midst
of an important conversation.

I pretended to listen to Penny, but really I was reasoning something
else.