"Are you ill?" exclaimed Leek, suddenly noticing, now that they were in the sunlight, the peculiarly worn look on the quiet and refined face.
"I am not very well. Perhaps I may give up my post in the College."
"I say, though, you don't mean that! Are we boys driving you away?"
"That, and other things. I don't know how it will be yet. But if I remain, I must get you all to behave differently."
"And so we will," cried Leek, in a generous fit of repentance, and some shame; as he remembered the impediments it had been their delight to throw into the way of the foreign master, and how patiently he had borne it all. Leek could not help being struck with the look of goodness, of truth in the face before him, though it might never have struck him particularly before; and it suddenly occurred to him to wonder whether they had been mistaken on sundry little matters. A man who has just treated us to a good dinner can't be a bad man.
"Mr. Henry, was it you that told of the seniors smoking, when there was that row last autumn term?" he asked impulsively.
"It was not. I answered this at the time."
"Then I'm blest if I don't believe it was Lamb, after all! He's a beauty. And I daresay other things that they said of you were as untrue?"
"I daresay they were," replied Mr. Henry, smiling.
"What a jolly shame! Don't go away because of us, Mr. Henry. It was all Trace's fault."