"He's right. He hasn't the strength. He might faint at Lord's. We can't run any risks."
Jim went back to his room—confounded. Mark met him and gripped his hands.
"You've g-got it," he cried. "I am glad. Isn't it glorious?"
"Glorious?"
Jim sat down and blubbered, like a Fourth Form boy.
However, it seemed certain then that another year would place Mark in the eleven, and also amongst the monitors, but this happy end to his Harrow career was not to be. Archibald, Jim, and he left Billy's at the end of the Easter half. In those days it was hardly possible for a boy to pass into Sandhurst direct from a public school. Billy said that Mark could do it—at the expense of his health; for extra subjects, like geometrical drawing, English literature, history, and so forth, would have had to be learned in addition to the regular school work, which in the Upper Sixth was as stiff as it could be.
"I'm very sorry to lose you," said Billy, when the brothers bade him good-bye. "Samphire major's future I am not concerned about. But I do worry about you, Samphire minor, because you attempt too much, you—er—so to speak—strain at the camel and swallow the gnat. Well, well," he fumbled with his glasses, "I should like to give you the benefit of my experience, but," he pursed up his lips, "I am not sanguine enough to hope that you will profit by it. Some excellent people think I take my duties too lightly. Perhaps I do, per—haps I do. A big house like this represents a force against which one individual is expected to pit his strength. But I realised long ago that what energy I could spare must of necessity prove—er—intermittent, the undisciplined, amorphous resistance would be constant. You—er—take me? Yes. So I governed myself accordingly. The great force which I was invited to control sways hither and thither, veering now to the right, and now—er—to the wrong. The swing of the pendulum, in fine. When it swings to the right I push it, so it swings a little farther; and when it swings the other way I pull behind, and perhaps it does not swing quite so far; but I don't try to stop the swing, because I know that such a feat is beyond my powers. I trust you are following me, Samphire minor. You, I fear, will recklessly expose yourself—and be rolled over, as happened in our house-match against Bashan's. There—I have warned you."
He signed to Archibald to remain behind. For a moment there was silence. Billy leaned back in his chair polishing the lenses of his pince-nez with a fine cambric handkerchief.
"If Mark had your body," he began absently, then, faintly smiling, he added: "Ah, what possibilities lie in that 'if,' which it were vain, quite vain to consider. Well, I hope that nothing will come between you and him, that your brotherly love, which has been a pleasant thing to witness, will continue to grow in strength. Mark has an extravagant affection for you—the greater because he does not wear it on his sleeve. Your success here has sweetened the bitterness of his many disappointments. You will get more from him than you give."
Archibald felt his cheek beginning to burn.