elpiece a foot away from
his own head, and to see two dirty ankles, not his own, emerging from
crazy boots.

The Major, too, presently, when he grew a trifle maudlin over his own
sorrows, began to call him "Frankie," and "my boy," and somehow it
mattered, from a man with the Major's obvious record. Frank pulled
himself up only just in time to prevent a retort when it first happened,
but it was not the slightest use to be resentful. The thing had to be
borne. And it became easier when it occurred to him to regard the Major
as a study; it was even interesting to hear him give himself away, yet
all with a pompous appearance of self-respect, and to recount his first
meeting with Gertie, now asleep upstairs.

The man was, in fact, exactly what Frank, in his prosperous days, would
have labeled "Bounder." He had a number of meaningless little
mannerisms--a way of passing his hand over his mustache, a trick of
bringing a look of veiled insolence into his eyes; there were subjects
he could not keep away from--among them Harrow School, the Universities
(which he called 'Varsity), the regiment he had belonged to, and a
certain type of adventure connected with women and champagne. And
underneath the whole crust of what the Major took to be breeding, there
was a piteous revelation of a feeble, vindictive, and rather nasty
character. It became more and more evident that the cheating
incident--or, rather, the accusation, as he persisted in calling
it--was merely the last straw in his fall, and that the whole thing had
been the result of a crumbly unprincipled kind of will underneath,
rather than of any particular strain of vice. He appeared, even now, to
think that his traveling about with a woman who was not his wife was a
sort of remnant of fallen splendor--as a man might keep a couple of
silver spoons out of the ruin of his house.

"I recommend you to pick up with one," remarked the Major. "There are
plenty to be had, if you go about it the right way."

"Thanks," said Frank, "but it's not my line."

(IV)

The morning, too, was a little trying.

Frank had passed a tolerable night. The Major had retired upstairs about
ten o'clock, taking his socks with him, presumably to sleep in them, and
Frank had heard him creaking about upstairs for a minute or two; there
had followed two clumps as the boots were thrown off; a board suddenly
spoke loudly; there was a little talking--obviously the Major had
awakened Gertie in order to m