his salary. Mr. Bembridge had
shown him a weapon with which he might fight his way quickly to the
front. He picked it up and resolved to use it. Soon he began to slash
out right and left. His blade chanced to encounter the outraged body of
an elderly and sardonic master. Eustace was advised that he had better
leave Eton. His father came down by train and took him away.

As they journeyed up to town, Mr. Lane lectured and exhorted, and
Eustace looked out of the window. Already he felt himself near to being
a celebrity. He had astonished Eton. That was a good beginning. Papa
might prose, knowing, of course, nothing of the poetry of caricature,
of the wild joys and the laurels that crown the whimsical. So while Mr.
Lane hunted adjectives, and ran sad-sounding and damnatory substantives
to earth, Eustace hugged himself, and secretly chuckled over his
pilgrim's progress towards the pages of _Vanity Fair_.

"Eustace! Eustace! Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, father."

"Then what have you to say? What explanation have you to offer for your
conduct? You have behaved like a buffoon, sir--d'you hear me?--like a
buffoon!"

"Yes, father."

"What the deuce do you mean by 'yes,' sir?"

Eustace considered, while Mr. Lane puffed in the approved paternal
fashion What did he mean? A sudden thought struck him. He became
confidential. With an earnest gaze, he said:

"I couldn't help doing what I did. I want to be like the other fellows,
but somehow I can't. Something inside of me won't let me just go on as
they do. I don't know why it is, but I feel as if I must do original
things--things other people never do; it--it seems in me."

Mr. Lane regarded him suspiciously, but Eustace had clear eyes, and
knew, at least, how to look innocent.

"We shall have to knock it out of you," blustered the father.

"I wish you could, father," the boy said. "I know I hate it."

Mr. Lane began to be really puzzled. There was something pathetic in the
words, and especially in the way they were spoken. He stared at Eustace
meditatively.

"So you hate it, do you?" he said rather limply at last. "Well, that's a
step in the right direction, at any rate. Perhaps things might have been
worse."

Eustace did not assent.

"They were bad enough," he said, with a simulation of shame. "I know
I've been a fool."

"Well, well," Mr. Lane said, whirling, as paternal weathercocks will,
to another point of the compass, "never mind, my boy. Cheer up! You