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.”