“Don’t trouble yourself about him,” she said--she saw that he had noticed that the stranger had noticed him. “He’ll only fancy that we are quarrelling; but we’re not, so it doesn’t matter.” “Not a tinker’s curse,” he replied, with more than necessary emphasis. Then he turned to her and spoke, leaning forward, swinging his racket between his knees, so as to convince the observant stranger that he was not so excited after all. “I tell you that you have hit upon the mistake that I have made all my life and that everybody about me has made,” he said. “From the first it was taken for granted that because my poor father was a fool I must be one too. I tell you that I took it for granted myself. Now, when a chap starts life in that way what chance has he, I should like to know? When a poor devil is told by every one around him that he has in him the seeds of an incurable disease--consumption, or cancer, or something--what chance has he? I never had a chance. That was why I made an ass of myself at Oxford. Oh, those blessed trustees! They told me when they were sending me to Oxford that they were perfectly certain I should make an ass of myself, and they somehow made me feel that it was inevitable that I should, and so I rode for a fall. I see it now. And it was the same when I went on my travels. They believed that I wanted to paint every place sealing-wax red that I came to, as I had painted the college oak navy blue, and they made that an excuse for cutting down my allowance to bedrock--they didn’t let me have enough to buy turpentine even at wholesale price to mix my paint.” “And you didn’t buy a can or two of distemper--distemper is what young dogs suffer from, and you were a sad young dog, you know,” said she, laughing under her breath. “I never did any painting at all after Oxford,” he said. “I had really only now and again an inclination for it. I give you my word that I began to feel ashamed--actually ashamed--at my own tameness, and it was really because I did so that I now and again nerved myself to go on a bust. Gloriana! what poor busts they were. I never came in touch with the police but once, and nothing came of it; the judge--every magistrate is a judge out there--began to laugh at the business--it had something to do with a mule, of course--and then the _polis_ began to laugh, and so the bust bust up, with every one grinning, and making me feel that I was pretty bit of a mug that couldn’t even get up a row that would be taken seriously.” “What did you do to the poor mule?” she asked, for she had detected the note of despondency in his voice as he told her the story of his failure, and she wanted to cheer him up.