“I know I haven’t, but I’ve heard young Jevons, and I draw the perfectly correct conclusion that you do. I’m awfully grateful, by the way, for your taking him up as you’ve done, and teaching him to wash his hands, and not look as if everybody wanted to thrash him. Did anybody suggest it to you?” “Oh, yes, Frank,” said David. “Well, you’ve done good work, though I didn’t mean to praise you. But Jevons copies you: he brushes his hair like you, and whistles between his teeth, or tries to, and runs instead of walking, and, as I say, swears. Do stop it, will you? He was leaning out of his study window yesterday, exchanging compliments with somebody, and I never heard such an assortment of Billingsgate. It’s such awfully bad form, you know. Also the sentiments expressed by bad language are not edifying.” “I’ll try, sir,” said David. “I—I never thought of swearing as meaning anything.” “I know you didn’t; I never said it was the expression of a foul mind. But the house is becoming a perfect company of bargees. Try not to swear yourself, and kick anybody who does when it’s convenient. That’s all about that.” “Right, sir,” said David. “Then there’s another thing,” said Adams. “I want you to tell me about the Court of Appeal. I’ve only just heard about it, and I don’t think I like it.” David frowned. This wasn’t his idea of a comfortable afternoon indoors at all, and he wished he had gone out for a run instead of carrying Plugs round the house. “I don’t think I can, sir,” he said. “There are other fellows concerned in it.” “Oh, I know that. The Court is you and Gregson and Bags; chiefly you. That’s why I asked you. I heard about it from the Head. He doesn’t like it, either. I said I would go into the matter. I don’t promise that he won’t as well.” “I suppose that little beast Manton told him,” remarked David. “I don’t agree with ‘little beast,’” said Adams, “but I agree that probably Manton told him. I really don’t see what else the Head of the house could do. Now I want to hear what the Court of Appeal have to say about themselves, just as I shall want to know what the prefects say about them. Gregson and Bags are quite safe in your hands as _advocatus_—well, perhaps, not quite _diaboli_. You can trust me for that.” David raised himself and sat Turk-fashion with crossed legs in the big basket-chair. “It’s rather a long story, sir, if I’m to tell it from the beginning,” he said. “Never mind.”