“Oho, Noll--so you are run dry at last!... Now I can get a word in edgeways; and I, too, may cackle, though it lack your literary finish.... You see, as we are in the confessional, I may say I have been a bit of a dog in my day. And, by Beelzebub! the gout hasn’t altogether driven the last spark out of me yet.... The tongues still wag about me, I have no smallest doubt.... It isn’t for me to preach you a sermon on your tom-follies, for they are infernally like my own. By God, you are no curate, there’s that much against you in heaven. Still, I will tell you bluntly, I have only had one fear for you--and that is the dandified schoolmaster that is in the heart of your father. The Ffolliotts never had any of the damned studious habits--we have always been sportsmen and gentlemen. And, by my soul, I believe you are bitten by the self-same dog.... It’s this literary business that makes me anxious about you; but a lampoon and a sharp tongue we all of us had the knack of using--_that_ don’t go with long hair and inky fingers and spectacles nor a milkman’s seat on a horse. By God, you may lampoon the Lord Chancellor, for all _I_ care--I never go to the House of Lords except to keep the damned idiot in his place. Lords Chancellor nowadays seem to think the Upper House is a confounded dames’ school. Damn all Lords Chancellor, say I----” “Yes, sir--damn all Lords Chancellor!” said Noll drily. Wyntwarde laughed: “Yes,” said he--“we wander.... Now, look you here, Noll--this house is free to you as long as you keep your fingers from ink-stains and your lips from preaching--the stables are not empty of horses. And, what’s more, I still hold to my bond. The ’Varsity is over--down goes three hundred a year. It would be damned bad morals to give you that again. But you shall have a couple of hundred a year as long as rumour speaks well of you; but the day you throw up the society of gentlemen and mix with the inky-fingered gentry, I will not only cancel you from my will, but, by the dogs, I stop even the allowance----” “I do not accept benefits under threat, sir,” said Noll. Wyntwarde stopped, scowled--burst into a laugh, and passed the matter by: “I would make it more,” he said; “but I suspect the ink-pot----” “If I have a mind to spill ink I will spill it,” said the youth hotly. The old lord chuckled: “You are your father’s son, my boy, on occasion,” said he. “Well, there’s nothing to attract you here just now; but you had better come down for the hunting next winter, eh?” Noll made a step towards him--hesitated--his mouth hardened: “I cannot stay in a house, sir, which my mother has struck off her visiting list,” he said sullenly. The old lord laughed loudly and long: “By God,” said he--“you are a man!” He went to the youth and gripped him by the shoulders: