Panoukian was pulling the puppy from under the bookcase. He turned and faced Old Mole with his schoolboy expression of wondering what now might be his guilt. He looked so young that none of the words with which Old Mole was preparing to crush him--scoundrel, traitor, villain, blackguard--was anything but inept. He was just engagingly, refreshingly young; younger than he had ever been, even as a boy. The discontent, the hardness and strain of revolt had faded from his eyes; they were clear and bright. He was as fresh as the morning. Plainly he had no thought beyond the puppy and the pleasure he had hoped to bring with it, and was startled by the harshness of the pedagogic note in Old Mole's exclamation, startled into shyness. Old Mole's determination crumbled away: his laudable resolve was whisked away from him. He excused himself with this: "I have no right to speak to him before I have come to an understanding with her." There was embarrassment between them, the awkwardness of master and pupil. To bridge it he said: "It is a long time since you have been to see us." Directly he had said it he knew that he had contributed to their deception, but while he was seeking a means of withdrawal Panoukian pounced on his opportunity and dragged their three-cornered relationship back to the old footing: and Old Mole could not altogether disguise his relief. "Yes," he said. "I've been so busy. Old Harbottle is running a private ball, and there's been a tremendous lot of work up and down the country." "Up and down the country," repeated Old Mole. "Yes. Harbottle's beginning to listen to what I say. I've been giving him some telling questions lately, and he's already cornered the Front Bench twice. . . . The old idiot is beginning to discover the uses of impersonal unpopularity as an instrument of success. He would never have taken the plunge by himself, and he's very grateful to me." "So you are beginning to do something?" "You can't do much in politics. I used to think you could. You can't do first-rate things, but I'm beginning to realize that it's a second-rate job." He grinned. "The odd thing is that, since I realized that, I'm getting quite to like old Harbottle. He's second-rate. He doesn't know it, of course, because he hasn't the least notion of what a first-rate man is like. He is perfectly cast-iron second-rate. Most surprising of all is that I am beginning to see that every man has the right to be himself--subject, of course, to every other man's right to kick him for it." "Eh?"