Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/90

 from that employed by the captain of his house. The truth was that Haigh had said a good deal about the matter to Heriot, and Heriot very little to Haigh, whose tongue was as intemperate out of school as it was in form. But to Jan he spoke plainly on this second Sunday evening of the term.

"It's obvious that you were placed a form too high. Such mistakes will occur; there's no way of avoiding them altogether; the question is, shall we try to rectify this one? It's rather late in the day, but I've known it done; the Head Master might allow it again. It would rest with him, so you had better not speak of it for the present. I mean, of course, that he might allow you to come down to Mr. Walrond's form, or even into mine."

At which Jan displayed some momentary excitement, and then sat stolidly embarrassed.

"It would be a desperate remedy, Rutter; it would mean your being a fag, after first escaping fagging altogether; in fact, it would be starting all over again. I don't say it wouldn't make your work easier for you during the whole time you're here. But I shall quite understand it if you prefer the evils that you know."

"It isn't the fagging. It isn't that I shouldn't like being in your form, sir," Jan blurted out. "But I don't want to run away from Mr. Haigh!" he mumbled through his teeth.

"Well, you'd only have to fight another day, if you did," said Heriot, with a laugh. And so the matter went no further; and not another boy or master in the school ever knew that it had gone so far.

But the being of whom Jan saw most, and the only one to whom he spoke his odd mind freely, was the other new man, Carpenter, now Chips to all the house. And Chips was another oddity in his way; but it was not Jan's