ebel. When you go up to Oxford in a year or so, you'll pose
as most painfully intellectual. You'll be a Socialist in
Politics, a Futurist in Art, and a Modernist or Ultramontane in
Religion--anything that's a rebellion against the established order.
At all costs let us be original and outrageous."

"Hear, hear," whispered Penny.

"Ray has been the strong, silent man so far," said Radley. "Let's
hear his Castle in the Air."

"For God's sake--" began Chappy.

"Speech! Speech!" demanded Pennybet.

"Oh, I don't know," demurred I. "I've not many ideas. I generally
think I'd like to be a country squire, very popular among the
tenants, who'd have my photo on their dressers. And I'd send them
all hares and pheasants at Christmas and be interested in their
drains--"

I was elaborating this picture, when Penny, feeling that he had made
his speech and was not particularly interested in anyone else's,
glanced at a gold wrist-watch, and decided that it was time for him
to go. He made a peculiarly effective exit, his hat tilted at what
he called a "damn-your-eyes" angle. Never again did Doe or I see
him, though we heard of his doings. God speed to him, our cocksure
Pennybet. Let us always think the best of him.

No sooner had the door clicked than Chappy exploded.

"That high youth ought to have his trousers taken down and be
birched. What are we coming to, when boys like him lecture their
elders on how to run the world?"

"That question," Radley retorted, "Adam probably asked Eve, when
Cain and Abel decided to be Socialists."

"I tell you, these self-opinionated boys want whipping, and so do
you, Master Doe, with your damned Fabianism."

"Oh, come, come," objected Radley. "I like them to be gloriously
self-confident. Young blood is heady stuff. And there'd be
something wrong, if a body full of young blood didn't have a head
full of glittering illusions."

"Rot!" proclaimed Chappy.

"I like them to be Socialists and Futurists and everything. If
_they_ don't want to put the world to rights, who will?"

"Damned rot!"

"It's nothing of the sort," rejoined Radley, getting annoyed. "They
ought to break out at this time. You can't bind up a bud to prevent
it bursting into flower."

"If I'd children who burst like that, I'd bind them for you!"

"No, you wouldn't," contradicted Radley, softening again. "You'd
expect them to be intolerant of you as old fashioned. You'd withdraw
behind your cigar-smoke and your old-fash