Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/373

 "I wonder what he'll do, sir?"

"Get things into the  for a start. Not all his things; his style wants purging. Smoke, Rutter?"

Heriot was filling his own pipe; but it was one thing for a master to consider himself free to smoke before a leaving boy, on the last night of the term, in defiance of Mr. Thrale's despotic attitude on the point, and quite another thing for him to offer the boy a cigarette. Jan declined the abrupt invitation with an almost shocked embarrassment.

"I thought a cigarette was no use to you," said Heriot, laughing. "And yet you've never gone back to your pipe, I believe?"

"Sir!"

Heriot was smiling the beatified smile that always broke through his first cloud.

"You don't suppose I didn't know, Rutter, that you used to smoke when you first came here?"

"You never let me see that you knew it, sir."

"You never let me catch you! I 'smelt it off you,' as they say, all the same; but I shouldn't have done so if I hadn't known all those things I was not supposed to know."

"It was magnificent of you to hush them up as you did!"

"It was a duty. But it wouldn't have been quite fair to trade on one's knowledge at the same time."

"Every master wouldn't look at it like that."

"Perhaps I had a sneaking sympathy as well," laughed Heriot, when he had blown a fresh cloud. "Still, I should have caught you if you hadn't given it up; and I've often wondered why you ever did."

"It was all Mr. Relton," said Jan after a pause. "I promised him I wouldn't smoke if I got into the Eleven."