"What? Examination over? Senior Wrangler, Double First Class, hey?" said the old gentleman. "I'll come directly," and the head disappeared.
Pen was standing with his back to the window, so that his uncle could not see the expression of gloomy despair on the young man's face. But when he held out his hand to Pen, and was about to address him in his cheery, high-toned voice, he caught sight of the boy's face; and dropping his hand said, "Why, Pen, what's the matter?"
"You'll see it in the papers at breakfast, sir," Pen said.
"See what?"
"My name isn't there, sir."
"Hang it, why should it be?" asked the Major, more perplexed.
"I have lost everything, sir," groaned out Pen; "my honour's gone; I'm ruined irretrievably; I can't go back to Oxbridge."
"Lost your honour?" screamed out the Major. "Heaven alive! You don't mean to say you have shown the white feather?"
Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. "No, it isn't that, sir. I'm not afraid of being shot; I wish anybody would shoot me. I have not got my degree. I—I'm plucked, sir."
The Major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way, and concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally upon rebellious university youth. "I wonder you can look me in the face after such a disgrace, sir," he said; "I wonder you submitted to it as a gentleman."