e code of honour was to forbid a lot of things that had been very
common in the school. Lying, cheating over bargains, telling tales,
bragging, bad language, and what the code called "conduct unbecoming
schoolfellows and gentlemen." There were a lot of rules in it, too,
about clean nails, and shirts, and collars and socks, and things of
that sort. If any boy refused to agree to it, he had to fight with
Thomas Johnson.

There could not have been a better person than Rupert to make a code
of honour. We have always been taught that honour was the watch-word
of our family--dearer than anything that could be gained or lost, very
much dearer than mere life. The motto of our arms came from an
ancestor who lost the favour of the King by refusing to do something
against his conscience for which he would have been rewarded. It is
"Honour before honours."

I can just remember the man, with iron-grey hair and gold spectacles,
who came to our house after my father's death. I think he was a
lawyer. He took lots of snuff, so that Henrietta sneezed when he
kissed her, which made her very angry. He put Rupert and me in front
of him, to see which of us was most like my father, and I can recall
the big pinch of snuff he took, and the sound of his voice saying "Be
like your father, boys! He was as good as he was gallant. And there
never lived a more honourable gentleman."

Every one said the same. We were very proud of it, and always boasted
about our father to the new nursemaids, or any other suitable hearer.
I was a good deal annoyed by one little maid, who when I told her,
over our nursery tea, that my father had been the most honourable of
men, began to cry about her father, who was dead too, and said he was
"just the same; for in the one and twenty years he kept a
public-house, he never put so much as a pinch of salt into the beer,
nor even a gill of water, unless it was in the evening at fair-time,
when the only way to keep the men from fighting was to give them their
liquor so that it could not do them much harm." I was very much
offended by the comparison of _my_ father, who was an officer and a
gentleman of rank, with _her_ father, who was a village publican; but
I should like to say, that I think now that I was wrong and Jane was
right. If her father gave up profit for principle, he _was_ like my
father, and like the ancestor we get the motto from, and like every
other honourable man, of any rank or any trade.

Every time I