Seven feet is not a very long way to fall, but when you do so head first, and alight on the point of your left shoulder on a boarded floor, something is bound to go. Pip's collar-bone went, and his thick head also suffered considerable concussion. However, his injuries, as described to Master Linklater by the entire dormitory next morning, were sufficient to give that late disciple of Bacchus a very bad fright indeed. His recollection of the disaster itself was vague in the extreme, but the strictures on his own part in the affair, received from numerous angry people during the next few days, had an effect upon him which was to last the rest of his life. Consequently it was a very remorseful and repentant Linklater who presented himself at the Sanatorium two days later, on a visit to the invalid. "Five minutes and no more!" said the decisive matron, as she showed him into the sick-room. "His head is still very painful." Linklater, to his eternal credit, devoted the greater part of the five minutes to an abject apology for his baseness and ingratitude. Pride--most invincible of all devils--was swept aside at last, and his broken words embarrassed Pip considerably. "All right, old man, you can dry up now," he remarked nervously, as Linklater paused for breath. "Let's drop the subject once and for all. It's all over." "Is it? Pip, they say you won't be able to bowl next term." This possibility had not occurred to Pip, but if he felt any disappointment he displayed none. "Yes," he said, "it's a pity. Never mind!" "And it's all my fault, my fault!" Linklater held his head in his hands and groaned aloud. "Your fault? Piffle, my dear man! What on earth had you to do with my falling off a bar? You were at the other end of the dormitory. The whole thing was an accident: it happened at a rather lucky time for you, that's all. You'd better cut now." Linklater rose to go, mightily comforted. "I heard how you held out against Chilly, trying to keep him from coming--" "Oh, hook it!" remarked the patient uneasily. But Linklater lingered a moment. He wanted to say something. "I'll--we'll look after the house till you come back, Pip," he said awkwardly. "Right. Back Maxwell up. He's a puker, Link." "Well, so long!" "So long!" Linklater reached the door, and turned. "It's a rum world, Pip," he said. "If you hadn't tumbled off that bar at that precise moment I should have been sacked." "You would," assented Pip. Then, as the door closed upon his friend, he turned to the wall, and murmured with a contented chuckle,-- "That's why I did it, my son!" CHAPTER VI Petticoat Influence "PIP!" "Well?" "May I come in?" "All right," said Pip in a surprised tone. His sister was not in the habit of craving admission to his den in this formal manner.