let down like this. It may be funny to you, but I call it rotten. And another think I call rotten is you having kept it from me all this time that you were 'Young Porky,' pa. That's what I call so jolly rotten! There's a fellow at our school who goes about swanking in the most rotten way because he once got Bombardier Wells's autograph. Fellows look up to him most awfully, and all the time they might have been doing it to me. That's what makes me so jolly sick. How long do you suppose they'd go on calling me 'Goggles' if they knew that you were my father? They'd chuck it to-morrow, and look up to me like anything. I do call it rotten. And chucking it up like this is the limit. What so you want to do it for? It's the silliest idea I ever heard. Why, if you beat Jimmy Murphy they'll have to give you the next chance with Sid Sampson for the Lonsdale belt. Jimmy beat Ted Richards, and Ted beat the Ginger Nut, and the Ginger Nut only lost on a foul to Sid Sampson, and you beat Ted Richards, so they couldn't help letting you have next go at Sid."
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Mr. Fisher beamed approval.
"If I've told your pa that once, I've told him twenty times," he said. "You certainly know a thing or two, Tommy."
"Well, I've made a study of it since I was a kid, so I jolly well ought to. All the fellows at our place are frightfully keen on it. One chap's got a snapshot of Freddy Welsh. At least, he says it's Freddy Welsh, but I believe it's just some ordinary fellow. Anyhow, it's jolly blurred, so it might be anyone. Pa, can't you give me a picture of yourself boxing? I could swank like anything. And you don't know how sick a chap gets of having chaps call him 'Goggles.'"
"Bill," said Mr. Fisher, "you and me had better be getting back to the White Hart."
Bill rose and followed him without a word.
Harold broke the silence which followed their departure. The animated expression which had been on his face as he discussed the relative merits of Sid Sampson and the Ginger Nut had given place to the abstracted gravity of the student.
"Ma!"
Mrs. Bramble started convulsively.
"Yes, dearie?"
"Will you hear me?"
Mrs. Bramble took the book.
"Yes, mother will hear you, precious," she said, mechanically.
Harold fixed his eyes upon the cut-glass hangings of the chandelier.
"'Be good, sweet maird, and let who will be clever'—clever. 'Do noble things...'"
