ruce," proceeded the headmaster after
a pause.

"Yes, sir?"

"Do you--are you in the habit of driving a motor-car frequently?"

"Every day, sir. You see, I am going to take up motors when I leave
school, so it's all education."

The headmaster was silent. To him the word "Education" meant Classics.
There was a Modern side at Wrykyn, and an Engineering side, and also a
Science side; but in his heart he recognised but one Education--the
Classics. Nothing that he had heard, nothing that he had read in the
papers and the monthly reviews had brought home to him the spirit of
the age and the fact that Things were not as they used to be so clearly
as this one remark of Jack Bruce's. For here was Bruce admitting that
in his spare time he drove motors. And, stranger still, that he did it
not as a wild frolic but seriously, with a view to his future career.

"The old order changeth," thought the headmaster a little sadly.

Then he brought himself back from his mental plunge into the future.

"Well, well, Bruce," he said, "we need not discuss the merits and
demerits of driving motor-cars, need we? What did you wish to see me
about?"

"I came to ask if I might get off morning school tomorrow, sir. Those
voters who got to the poll just in time and settled the election--I
brought them down in the car. And the policeman--he's a Radical, and
voted for Pedder--Mr Pedder--has sworn--says I was exceeding the
speed-limit."

The headmaster pressed a hand to his forehead, and his mind swam into
the future.

"Well, Bruce?" he said at length, in the voice of one whom nothing can
surprise now.

"He says I was going twenty-eight miles an hour. And if I can get to
the Court tomorrow morning I can prove that I wasn't. I brought them to
the poll in the little runabout."

"And the--er--little runabout," said the headmaster, "does not travel
at twenty-eight miles an hour?"

"No, sir. It can't go more than twenty at the outside."

"Very well, Bruce, you need not come to school tomorrow morning."

"Thank you, sir."

The headmaster stood thinking.... The new order....

"Bruce," he said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Tell me, do I look very old?"

Bruce stared.

"Do I look three hundred years old?"

"No, sir," said Bruce, with the stolid wariness of the boy who fears
that a master is subtly chaffing him.

"I feel more, Bruce," said the headmaster, with a smile. "I feel more.
You will remember to congratulate your father for me, won't you