m was to shout at your
scout for at least a week to show that you are not an infant, another
was not to row, and the last was not to play cards all day and night.
My brother's an odd kind of chap, the sort of man who doesn't know the
ace of spades by sight, but it's as easy to shout as it is not to row.
Your name's Marten, isn't it?"

"Yes," I replied; "how did you know that?"

"I scored when you came over last term to play for Cliborough against
Wellingham. I was twelfth man to the XI., though you needn't believe
it if you don't want to. It's wonderful what a crop of twelfth men
there are kicking around; you may just as well say you are a liar smack
out, as tell any one you are a twelfth man."

I told him that I believed him.

"That's only your politeness," he went on; "in a week you will be
talking about me as 'that man Ward who says he was twelfth man at
Wellingham.'"

I sat in his rooms and listened to him talking until eleven o'clock;
for almost the first time in my life I had nothing to say, and that
must have been the reason why I felt amused and uncomfortable at the
same time. He seemed to know all sorts of people, and he spoke of them
by their Christian names, which impressed me, and he referred to London
as a place well enough to stay in for a time, but a terrible bore when
one got accustomed to it. Now I had only been to London three times,
and one of those could hardly be said to count since it was to see a
dentist. As I went back to my rooms, I thought that my education had
been neglected in many ways, and that Ward had been having a much
better time than I had. But I soon changed my mind and decided that he
was the kind of fellow whom I should have thought a slacker at
Cliborough, and I cannot put up with a man, who when he is doing one
thing always wants to be doing another.

When I got back to my rooms I found a letter from my uncle. He was a
bishop, and there had been trouble between us when I was a small boy at
Cliborough; he had made jokes about me which I did not bear in silence.
But he had spent a month of the summer holidays with us, and had told
my mother that I had greatly improved; I thought the same thing about
him, so we got on together very well. I may as well say at once that I
had laid siege to the bishop. Instead of waiting for him to go for me
I went for him, and my mother said that I had discovered the boy in the
bishop. If he was idle I employed him, and on his last day