“I shall remember this all my life,” he began. “But I couldn’t take five hundred from you, Fishpingle, either as a gift or a loan. And, believe me, I shall have no difficulty in raising the money with a guarantee from my father. I made a clean breast of it to you, because I thought that together we might work out the best way of breaking beastly news to him. It is beastly to find out that he has been pinching while I have been squandering. He put the thing in a phrase at breakfast. Wait! Let me get his own words. They sunk in. I can promise you. Yes; I have ’em. ‘It is exasperating to be pestered for the extra inch, when you’ve given the ell cheerfully.’ Asking for his guarantee is just that extra inch clapped on to the ell of my allowance. Now—tackle him I must. Together we’ll settle the where and the when and the how. But you’re a topper, the very best in the world!” He gripped his hand fiercely. Fishpingle accepted the situation. He perceived that here was a point of honour and principle. No Pomfret could be swerved from that. So he said simply: “If the Squire must be told, Master Lionel, tell him to-night, after dinner, when he is sipping his port.” “Right! I will.” “You made no excuse to me, make none to him.” “Right again, you, you—sage.” Fishpingle pointed to the river. “A trout is rising just beyond that stump. He lies under it, a whopper.” “Is he? Do you know, Fishpingle, there are moments when sport seems to me a poor substitute for other and more exciting things. You’ve excited me. You have come up from under your stump, and you’re a whopper. And I want to throw my fly over you.” Fishpingle betrayed slight uneasiness. The young man confronting him with keen sparkling eyes had lost his look of irresolution. His firm chin stuck out aggressively, he spoke with the authority of his father. “As you please, Master Lionel.” Lionel hesitated, picking his words, but joyously sensible that his mind had become clear again. “I suppose,” he began tentatively, “that the truth is just this. I have changed, not you dear people. I used to take certain things and persons for granted, you, for instance. It seemed to me, before I went to India, that you were part of the general scheme, a sort of keystone to the arch. I really thought that you wallowed in being our butler and general factotum.” “So I do.” “Fishpingle—that’s a whopper, too. I’m not quite the innocent fool I was. Men serve others, cheerfully enough, if they’re the right sort, but they do it because they have to. I never met a fellow yet, old or young, who didn’t want to be his own, if he could manage it. I supposed that you couldn’t manage it. But you can. More, you could have managed it long ago. That’s as clear as our water is to-day.” “I wanted to stay on.” “But why—why?” “This is my home, Master Lionel.”