“I think I may as well start work for the Swift to-night,” said he, “if you don’t mind.”
“By all means, my boy. Come along to my room and we’ll look through the list of subjects.”
Arthur, before the task was half over, had recovered his spirits and advanced far in the esteem of his future kinsman.
“Awfully brickish of you, sir,” he said. “It wouldn’t be a bad score for our house if we got all the prizes at the exams, would it?”
“Not at all. But we mustn’t be too confident.”
“Jolly lucky we’re cut off from the rest of the chaps, isn’t it? It makes us all sit up.”
“That state of things may end any time, you know,” said the master. “But we must ‘sit up’ all the same.”
“Oh, but it won’t come out till the exams, are over, will it?”
“How do I know?”
Arthur glanced up at his kinsman, and inwardly reflected what a clever chap he was to ask such a question in such a way.