As they journeyed up to town, Mr. Lane lectured and exhorted, and Eustace looked out of the window. Already he felt himself near to being a celebrity. He had astonished Eton. That was a good beginning. Papa might prose, knowing, of course, nothing of the poetry of caricature, of the wild joys and the laurels that crown the whimsical. So while Mr. Lane hunted adjectives, and ran sad-sounding and damnatory substantives to earth, Eustace hugged himself, and secretly chuckled over his pilgrim’s progress towards the pages of Vanity Fair.
“Eustace! Eustace! Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, father.”
“Then what have you to say? What explanation have you to offer for your conduct? You have behaved like a buffoon, sir—d’you hear me?—like a buffoon!”
“Yes, father.”
“What the deuce do you mean by ‘yes,’ sir?”
Eustace considered, while Mr. Lane puffed in the approved paternal fashion What did he mean? A sudden thought struck him. He became confidential. With an earnest gaze, he said:
“I couldn’t help doing what I did. I want to be like the other fellows, but somehow I can’t. Something inside of me won’t let me just go on as they do. I don’t know why it is, but I feel as if I must do original things—things other people never do; it—it seems in me.”
Mr. Lane regarded him suspiciously, but Eustace had clear eyes, and knew, at least, how to look innocent.
“We shall have to knock it out of you,” blustered the father.