"Were you happy there?" asked the girl.
The other's face lit up with the enthusiasm she liked in him so well.
"Was I not?" he said.
Albert Edward took all the credit to himself for the name of Silver Mug. Albert always took all the credit for everything; but really he was by no means so original as he imagined.
In fact, Jim Silver had been Silver Mug when Albert was still a ragged little urchin asking for cigarette pictures from passing toffs outside Brighton Railway Station.
A Lower Boy at Eton had originated the name. It was apt, and it stuck.
Jim Silver in Bromhead's was hugely rich, and he had a great, ugly, honest face. Friends and enemies called him by the name; and he had a good few of both. The former loved him for the qualities the latter hated him for. The cads of the school chaffed surreptitiously about his birth. They said he was the grandson of an agricultural labourer and the son of a bank clerk; but only one of them, more caddish or more courageous than the rest, said so to his face.
"I wouldn't mind if I was," said simple Jim, and was cheered by his loyal little friends, Lord Amersham and others of the right kidney.
His father never came to see him when he was at school.