"Do I look as if I belonged here? I'm the latest import. Sit down on yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life. By the way, before I start, there's just one thing. If you ever have occasion to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name? P-s-m-i-t-h. See? There are too many Smiths, and I don't care for Smythe. My father's content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I've decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won't), or simply Smith, the _P_ not being sounded. Compare the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-balk. See?" Mike said he saw. Psmith thanked him with a certain stately old world courtesy. "Let us start at the beginning," he resumed. "My infancy. When I was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with a shilling an hour by my nurse to keep an eye on me, and see that I did not raise Cain. At the end of the first day she struck for one-and-six, and got it. We now pass to my boyhood. At an early age, I was sent to Eton, everybody predicting a bright career for me. But," said Psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like gaze on Mike through the eyeglass, "it was not to be." "No?" said Mike. "No. I was superannuated last term." "Bad luck." "For Eton, yes. But what Eton loses, Sedleigh gains." "But why Sedleigh, of all places?" "This is the most painful part of my narrative. It seems that a certain scug in the next village to ours happened last year to collar a Balliol--" "Not Barlitt!" exclaimed Mike. "That was the man. The son of the vicar. The vicar told the curate, who told our curate, who told our vicar, who told my father, who sent me off here to get a Balliol too. Do _you_ know Barlitt?" "His father's vicar of our village. It was because his son got a Balliol that I was sent here." "Do you come from Crofton?" "Yes." "I've lived at Lower Benford all my life. We are practically long-lost brothers. Cheer a little, will you?" Mike felt as Robinson Crusoe felt when he met Friday. Here was a fellow human being in this desert place. He could almost have embraced Psmith. The very sound of the name Lower Benford was heartening. His dislike for his new school was not diminished, but now he felt that life there might at least be tolerable. "Where were you before you came here?" asked Psmith. "You have heard my painful story. Now tell me yours." "Wrykyn. My father took me away because I got such a lot of bad reports." "My reports from Eton were simply scurrilous. There's a libel action in every sentence. How do you like this place, from what you've seen of it?" "Rotten."