Next day Claremont corrected the papers.
"Well, Mansell, I can't find your paper anywhere."
"I showed it up, sir."
"Well, I am sure I don't know where it is. You had better go and find Mr Douglas, and ask him if he knows anything about it."
Mr Douglas was the mathematical master, to whom all marks were sent. He added them up, and made out the orders.
After an unnecessarily long interval Mansell returned.
"I am sorry, sir; Mr Douglas has not seen them."
"Well, I suppose it must be all my fault. I shall have to give you an average on your papers, which, strange to say, have been, for you, remarkably good."
Mansell was averaged sixth for the paper. A real good bluff gives more pleasure than all the honest exercises of one's life put together.
There was laughter in No. 16 Study that evening. A few weeks ago Gordon would have been horrified at such a thing; but now it seemed a splendid jest. He would not have cribbed himself. He preferred to beat a man with his own brains, though Mansell would have protested that it was a greater effort to pit one's brains against a master long trained in spotting tricks than against some dull-headed scholar. The Public School system, at any rate, teaches its sons the art of framing very ingenious theories with which to defend their faults; a negative virtue, perhaps, but none the less an achievement.