The Caterpillar rose slowly, long and thin, spick and span.
"If you please, sir," said he, "I was whispering!"
A——'s sense of humour was tickled.
"My compliments to the Head Master," said he, "and please tell him that I find, on careful inquiry, that Egerton was—whispering."
A shout of laughter from Olympus proclaimed that the message had been delivered. The Caterpillar had saved the situation.
John became a disciple of this accomplished young gentleman and tried to imitate him. For Egerton represented, faithfully enough, traditions to which John bowed the knee. Upon any point of schoolboy honour his authority ruled supreme. He told the truth among his peers; he loathed obscenity; he disliked and condemned bad language.
"The best men don't swear much," he would say. "It's doosid bad form. I allow myself a 'damn' or two, nothing more. My great-grandfather, who was one of the Regency lot, was known as Cursing Egerton, but nowadays we leave that sort of thing to bargees."
Quite unconsciously, John assimilated the Caterpillar's axioms.
"We're not sent here at enormous expense to learn only Latin and Greek. At Harrow and Eton one is licked into shape for the big things: diplomacy, politics, the Services. One is taught manners, what? I'm not a marrying sort of man, but if I do have sons I shall send 'em here, even if I have to pinch a bit."
This was the side of Egerton which appealed so strongly to John. The Caterpillar was an Harrovian to the core, like the Duffer and Cæsar Desmond. He deplored the increasing predominance of sons of very rich men. And he anathematized Harrovian fathers who were persuaded by Etonian wives to send their sons to the Plain instead of to the Hill. That some of the famous Harrow families, who owed so much to the School, should forsake it, seemed to Egerton the unpardonable sin.