percolating into nooks and
crevices, undreamed of: the hearts of the Fourth Form, for instance.
In Dirty Dick's time there had been almost universal slackness. In
pupil-room, Rutford read a book; boys could work or not as they
pleased, provided their tutor was not disturbed. Warde, on the other
hand, made it a point of honour to work with his pupils. His
indefatigable energies, his good humour, his patience, were never so
conspicuous as when he was coaching duffers. In other ways he made the
boys realize that he was at the Manor for their advantage, not his own.
The gardens and park were kept strictly private by Dirty Dick. Warde
threw them open; a favour hardly appreciated in the winter quarter, but
the House admitted that it would be awfully jolly in the summer to lie
under the trees far from the "crowd." In a word--a "privilege."

Upon the last Saturday, to John's delight, Desmond asked him to spend a
week in Eaton Square. John had paid two visits to White Ladies; he was
now about to experience something entirely new. White Ladies and
Verney Boscobel were typical of the past; they illustrated the history
of the families who had inhabited them. The great world went to White
Ladies to see the pictures and the gardens, the Gobelin tapestries, the
Duchess and her guests; but the same world dined in Eaton Square to see
Charles Desmond.

During this visit, our John first learned what miracles one individual
may accomplish. At White Ladies, he had dimly perceived, as has been
said, the duties and responsibilities imposed upon rank and wealth. In
Eaton Square he saw more plainly the duties and responsibilities
imposed upon a man of great talents. Both Charles Desmond and the Duke
of Trent were hard workers, but the labours of the duke seemed to John
(and to other wise persons) drab-coloured. Charles Desmond's work, in
contrast, presented all the colours of the spectrum. John left White
Ladies, thanking his stars that he was not a duke; he came away from
Eaton Square filled with the ambition to be Private Secretary to the
great Minister. And when Mr. Desmond said to him with his genial
smile, "Well, young John, Harry, I hope, will be my secretary, and the
crutch of my declining years. But what would you like to be?" John
replied fervently, "Oh, sir, I should like to be Harry's understudy."

"Would you?"

And then John saw the face of his kind host change. The smile faded.
Mr. Desmond had taken his answe