hip,--a most delicate question, which probably would be
beyond the majority of readers, as it is of the writer. The face of the
public-school man was a wonder to see. It was lighted up with pleasure,
for he was an excellent scholar, yet clouded with alarm, for he knew the
penalties of such behaviour in a "man" with an examination before him.

"My dear boy," he said, "in which of your books do you find any reference
to that?"

"In none of them, I suppose," said the young scholar. "But, you don't
think there is any sanctity in a set of prescribed books?"

"Oh no, no sanctity: but use," said the alarmed master. "Come, Theo,
there's a good fellow, don't despise the tools we all must work with.
It's your duty to the old place, you know, which all these newspaper
fellows are throwing stones at whenever they have a chance: and it's
your duty to your college. I know what you are worth, of course: but
how can work be tested to the public eye except by the lists?"

"Why should I care for the public eye?" said the magnanimous young man.
"_We_ know that the lists don't mean everything. A headache might make
the best scholar that ever was lose his place. A fellow that knows
nothing might carry the day by a fluke. Don't you remember, sir, that
time when Daws got the Lincoln because of that old examiner, who gave
us all his own old fads in the papers? Every fellow that was any good
was out of it, and Daws got the scholarship. I am sure you can't have
forgotten that."

"Oh no, I have not forgotten it," said the master ruefully. "But that was
only once in a way. Come, Theo, be reasonable. As long as you are in
training, you know, you must keep in the beaten way. Think, my boy, of
your school--and of me, if you care for my credit as a tutor."

"You know, sir, I care for you, and to please you," said Warrender,
with feeling. "But as for your credit as a tutor, who can touch that?
And even I am not unknown here," he added, with a little boyish pride.
"Everybody who is of any importance knows that the Rector himself has
always treated me quite as a friend. I don't think"--this with the
ineffable simple self-assurance of youth, so happy in the discrimination
of those who approve of it that the gratification scarcely feels like
vanity--"that I shall be misunderstood here."

"Oh, the young ass!" said the master to himself, as he went away. "Oh,
the young idiot! Poor dear Theo, what will be his feelings when he finds
out that all they ca