Jack looked at Howard with a smile. "Here's the real man at last—the tyrant's vein! Of course, I obey. I didn't really mean it; and I like to hear you speak like that; it's rather fine."
Presently Jack said, "Now, about the Governor—rather a douche, I expect? But I see you can take care of yourself; he's hugely delighted—the intellectual temperature rises in every letter I get from him. But I want to make sure of one thing. I'm not going to stay on here much longer. I don't want a degree—it isn't the slightest use, plain or coloured. I want to get to work. If you come up again next term, I can stand it, not otherwise."
"Very well," said Howard, "that's a bargain. I must just talk things over with Maud. If we come up to Cambridge in October, you will stay till next June. If we don't, you shall be planted in the business. They will take you in, I believe, at any time, but would prefer you to finish your time here."
"Yes, that's it," said Jack, "but I want work: this is all right, in a way, but it's mostly piffle. How all these Johnnies can dangle on, I don't know; it's not my idea of life."
"Well, there's no hurry," said Howard, "but it shall be arranged as you wish."
XXXI
MAKING THE BEST OF IT
Howard became aware that with his colleagues he had suddenly become rather a person of importance. His "place" in the country was held in some dim way to increase the grandeur of the College. He found himself deferred to and congratulated. Mr. Redmayne was both caustic and affectionate.
"You look very well, I must say," he said. "You have a touch of the landed personage about you which becomes you. I should like you to come back here for our sakes, but I shan't press it. And how is Madam? I hope you have got rid of your first illusions? No? Well you must make haste and be reasonable. I am not learned in the vagaries of feminine temperament, but I imagine that the fair sex like to be dominated, and you will do that. You have a light hand on the reins—I always said that you rode the boys on the snaffle, but the curb is there! and in matrimony—well, well, I am an old bachelor of course, and I have a suspicion of all nooses. Never mind my nonsense, Kennedy—what I like about you, if I may say so, is that you have authority without pretensions. People will do as you wish, just to please you; now I have always to be cracking the whip. These fellows here are very worthy men, but they are not men of the world! They are honest and sober—indeed one can hardly get one of them to join one in a glass of port—but they are limited, very limited. Now if only you could have kept clear of matrimony—no disrespect to Madam—what a comfortable time we might have had here! Man appoints and God disappoints—I suppose it is all for the best."