“If the young cub in question can’t get in the county without the help of a girl,” said the Harrow captain, sore but dignified, “he’d prefer to stop outside, thank you.” “Boy,” said the little parson, “you must learn to respect your elders--sisters especially.” “But she’s my twin,” said T. S. M. “She’s older than you, though, ever so much older,” said the oracular Archie. “Girls don’t begin to grow young until they become women. Only wait a bit; there’ll come a time when you’ll find yourself years older than Grace is.” “But she’s so beas’ly patronisin’,” said poor T. S. M. “She might be a howlin’ authority on the game, a reg’ler A. G. Steel, or a chap like that, instead of a beas’ly girl with the cheek of a female journalist. I’ll admit she’s got a bit o’ book knowledge,--Badminton, and all that--and can talk like a phonograph, but she’s not going to play the apostle with me, not if I know it. Her airs are alarmin’. Don’t know why you men let her rag you, and fag you, and cheek you, and order you about the show accordin’ to her imperial pleasure. I’m goin’ to kick. To me that sort o’ thing ain’t at all amusin’. Why at Harrow----” “Yes, at Harrow,” said the little parson eagerly. “Yes, at Harrow,” said Archie, with a burning eye. “Yes, at Harrow,” said every individual person at the table in the proper order in which he was seated, with strained intensity. “I can see you’re all under her thumb,” said the unhappy T. S. M., reddening to the roots of his hair. “She just ruffles it over everybody, from the Guv’nor to the gardener’s boy. And her ways are simply howlin’. I brought Billy Jowett, who’s in the same game as me at Har--, yes, in the same game as me, down here for a week end. And this nice brought-up sister o’ mine says to him after he’d been here about a day, ‘I say, Mister Jowett, isn’t it exhaustin’ to have such brilliant gifts? Your mama is so proud of you, I’m sure, and how brave of her to let you come so far from home without your governess!’ Well, that riled Billy so cruel that he just cut back by the next train, and he says that if I ever ask him to come down again he shall take it as an insult.” “That’s luck,” said the unabashed Miss Grace. “The coxey little boy; and he _was_ such an awfully gifted being! Talked of George Eliot as though he knew him well. Then he got discussing ‘The Historical Continuity of the Church of England’ with the Guv’nor, and then ‘The Inwardness of the Harmsworth Magazine,’ and housetop talk o’ that sort. Then he got arguing with the Guv’nor--yes, _arguing_, Archie, and once I’m certain that he contradicted the Guv’nor flat. It just made my blood _boil_; and when he said, Archie, ‘that he had been told that you batted rather well,’ I thought it somewhere about time that he had a hint.”