“The Head _is_ a little forgetful. _I_ ought to have----But it’s all right,” the Chaplain added soothingly. “Pot won’t--er--give you away.” Mr. Brownell, who knew what smoking led to, testified out of his twelve years’ experience of what he called the Animal Boy. He left little unexplored or unexplained. “There may be something in what you say,” the Reverend John assented. “But as a matter of fact, their actual smoking doesn’t amount to much. They talk a great deal about their brands of tobacco. Practically, it makes them rather keen on putting down smoking among the juniors--as an encroachment on their privilege, you see. They lick ’em twice as hard for it as _we’d_ dare to.” “Lick!” Mr. Brownell cried. “One expels! One expels! _I_ know the end of these practices.” He told his companion, in detail, with anecdotes and inferences, a great deal more about the Animal Boy. “Ah!” said the Reverend John to himself. “You’ll leave at the end of the term; but you’ll have a deuce of a time first.” Aloud: “We-ell, I suppose no one can be sure of any school’s tendency at any given moment, but, personally, I should incline to believe that we’re reasonably free from the--er--monastic microbes of--er--older institutions.” “But a school’s a school. You can’t get out of _that_! It’s preposterous! You must admit _that_,” Mr. Brownell insisted. They were within hail of Pot by now, and the Reverend John asked him how Affairs of State stood. “All right, thank you, sir. How are you, sir?” “Loungin’ round and sufferin’, my son. What about the dates of the Exeter and Tiverton matches?” “As late in the term as we can get ’em, don’t you think, sir?” “Quite! Specially Blundell’s. They’re our dearest foe,” he explained to the frozen Mr. Brownell. “Aren’t we rather light in the scrum just now, Mullins?” “’Fraid so, sir: but Packman’s playin’ forward this term.” “_At_ last!” cried the Reverend John. (Packman was Pot’s second-in-command, who considered himself a heaven-born half-back, but Pot had been working on him diplomatically.) “He’ll be a pillar, at any rate. Lend me one of your fuzees, please. I’ve only got matches.” Mr. Brownell was unused to this sort of talk. “A bad beginning to a bad business,” he muttered as they returned to College. Pot finished out his meditations; from time to time rubbing up the gloss on his new seven-and-sixpenny silver-mounted, rather hot, myall-wood pipe, with its very thin crust in the bowl. * * * * *