"It's a large order for one monitor," continued Pip, "but I'm going to do it, my son." Pip finished a rather ornate pattern on the mantelpiece, laid down the poker, and continued talking, looking straight into the fire. "What sort of state do you think the house will be in by the end of the term if it's to be run by Kelly, Hicks, and--you in your present state? Rotten! I've seen that sort of thing before. Kendall's house went just the same way four years ago, and--look at it now! _We_ aren't going that way if I can help it. If only you'll pull yourself together--" "What the blazes do you mean?" broke out Linklater passionately. "Do you think I'm going to stop taking it out of an idle little hog of a fag just to please you?" "Oh, Butler? I wasn't talking about him," said Pip. "Listen a minute. Lately I've been able to get no good out of you at all, and you don't seem to have had much use for me either. It's not my business to jaw, but I think you have rather allowed yourself to be talked over by a pretty rotten lot--sorry, if they're friends of yours!--and the result, to be quite frank, is that you are simply playing Hades with the house." "What have I done?" snapped Linklater. "Well, the monitors are a weak enough gang in all conscience, and it takes them all their time to run things as it is; but when they find you in the middle of every riot and row they're told to suppress, I don't wonder that they all go about looking as if they wanted to blub. Then, one night last week in the dormitory I woke up--about two in the morning, I think--when you were still sitting with some of your pals round the fire. As far as I remember there were you and Hicks and Kelly and little Redgrave--" "You ought to set up as a private detective," said Linklater, in tones which were meant to be sarcastic, but which only succeeded in sounding rather frightened. "I happen to know," said Pip, "because you were talking rather loud--at the top of your voices, in fact. And to judge by your conversation you were brewing whiskey-punch." He stopped, and looked at his friend inquiringly. "I wonder you didn't rush and tell Chilly," said Linklater witheringly. "I might have done," agreed Pip, "only it happens to be rather a serious matter for a monitor to be nabbed in a business like that." "So you thought you'd give me a pi-jaw instead! That was decent of you." Pip took this affront quite impassively. "Don't talk rot," he said. "You know perfectly well that this isn't a pi-jaw. They're not in my line. We--we are both people of the same sort of character. The only difference is that at present you happen to be rather off your oats owing to the Head's treatment of you, and that fills you with a desire to raise Cain and drink punch in the dormitory--eh?" This exceedingly handsome way of putting things appealed even to Linklater's selfish soul. "Well, perhaps you are right," he growled. "But why can't you be a sportsman and join in?" Pip laughed.