As they journeyed up to town, Mr. Lane lectured and exhorted, and Eustace looked out of the window. Already he felt himself near to being a celebrity. He had astonished Eton. That was a good beginning. Papa might prose, knowing, of course, nothing of the poetry of caricature, of the wild joys and the laurels that crown the whimsical. So while Mr. Lane hunted adjectives, and ran sad-sounding and damnatory substantives to earth, Eustace hugged himself, and secretly chuckled over his pilgrim’s progress towards the pages of _Vanity Fair_. “Eustace! Eustace! Are you listening to me?” “Yes, father.” “Then what have you to say? What explanation have you to offer for your conduct? You have behaved like a buffoon, sir--d’you hear me?--like a buffoon!” “Yes, father.” “What the deuce do you mean by ‘yes,’ sir?” Eustace considered, while Mr. Lane puffed in the approved paternal fashion What did he mean? A sudden thought struck him. He became confidential. With an earnest gaze, he said: “I couldn’t help doing what I did. I want to be like the other fellows, but somehow I can’t. Something inside of me won’t let me just go on as they do. I don’t know why it is, but I feel as if I must do original things--things other people never do; it--it seems in me.” Mr. Lane regarded him suspiciously, but Eustace had clear eyes, and knew, at least, how to look innocent. “We shall have to knock it out of you,” blustered the father. “I wish you could, father,” the boy said. “I know I hate it.” Mr. Lane began to be really puzzled. There was something pathetic in the words, and especially in the way they were spoken. He stared at Eustace meditatively. “So you hate it, do you?” he said rather limply at last. “Well, that’s a step in the right direction, at any rate. Perhaps things might have been worse.” Eustace did not assent. “They were bad enough,” he said, with a simulation of shame. “I know I’ve been a fool.” “Well, well,” Mr. Lane said, whirling, as paternal weathercocks will, to another point of the compass, “never mind, my boy. Cheer up! You see your fault--that’s the main thing. What’s done can’t be undone.” “No, thank heaven!” thought the boy, feeling almost great. How delicious is the irrevocable past--sometimes! “Be more careful in future. Don’t let your boyish desire for follies carry you away.” “I shall,” was his son’s mental rejoinder. “And I dare say you’ll do good work in the world yet.” The train ran into Paddington Station on this sublime climax of fatherhood, and the further words of wisdom were jerked out of Mr. Lane during their passage to Carlton House Terrace in a four-wheeled cab. ***** “What an extraordinary person Mr. Eustace Lane is!” said Winifred Ames to her particular friend and happy foil, Jane Fraser. “All London is beginning to talk about him. I suppose he must be clever?”