Only Mr. Bent affected to be agreeably surprised. “They were,” he said, “an unusually intelligent set of parents--quite unusually intelligent. Lady Bellingham, of course, talked an amazing lot of drivel; you would expect that from a woman. Still, she knows a great deal more than Chowdler does; for, though she can’t express herself rationally, she does realise in a vague way that beauty is a form of truth, and that education ought to mean something more than Balbus-built-a-wall and the off-theory. Even Mr.--I can’t remember his name--the stockbroker, has grasped what education is _not_; which is more than Chowdler ever has. They offered him an inferior substitute at the school where he spent his dazzling youth, and, with the intuition of genius, he divined that it was not worth his acceptance. And probably it wasn’t. And, then, the silent ones! How seldom you find four people in any given room who are wise enough to keep silence about a subject of which they know nothing. Whaley was the only really hopeless failure. Yes, they certainly were an unusually intelligent set of parents.” “That’s all very well,” protested Mr. Plummer, “but if _I_ had said so, you would have cursed me for my unreasoning optimism and made out that I was blinded by my infatuation for the middle classes.” “Perhaps,” replied Mr. Bent airily, “perhaps. And very likely I should have been right.” CHAPTER IX “GOD’S IN HIS HEAVEN” “I always wonder, Bent,” said Mr. Rankin, as the two men met in Colonus on their way to the ground where the Cock-house match was about to begin--“I always wonder why you, who pour such scorn on athleticism, never by any chance miss a house match.” “There are many things in this world to wonder at,” replied Mr. Bent; “for instance, why the sea is boiling hot and why Radicals are the most inveterate Tories in private life. But, as a matter of fact, it is not the football that attracts me on these occasions so much as the psychology of the competing housemasters.” “Translate with brief notes,” said his companion. “To an observer of human nature,” Mr. Bent explained, “nothing is so illuminating as the behaviour of a housemaster when his house is playing a match. Chowdler, of course, is elemental, and offers few points of interest; he has the naked simplicity of the savage or the sportsman--blatant in victory, ungenerous in defeat. But Trimble is more complex, and, therefore, more worthy of study. If I join him, he will affect an air of complete detachment and ask me for my views on Welsh Disestablishment or Woman Suffrage; but he will interrupt himself at intervals to murmur ‘Fools! asses! idiots! they deserve to be beaten!’ Of course they _will_ be beaten?” “Don’t be too sure of that!” said Mr. Rankin. “Two of Chowdler’s best men are crocked, and Trimble’s have come on a lot lately.”