At supper Mr. Palmer asked suddenly if the headmaster wanted Mark to go into the Confirmation Class this term.

“No thanks,” said Mark.

Uncle Henry raised his eyebrows.

“I fancy that is for me to decide.”

“Neither my father nor my mother nor my grandfather would have wanted me to be confirmed against my will,” Mark declared.  He was angry without knowing his reasons, angry in response to some impulse of the existence of which he had been unaware until he began to speak.  He only knew that if he surrendered on this point he should never be able to act for himself again.

“Are you suggesting that you should never be confirmed?” his uncle required.

“I’m not suggesting anything,” said Mark.  “But I can remember my father’s saying once that boys ought to be confirmed before they are thirteen.  My mother just before she died wanted me to be confirmed, but it couldn’t be arranged, and now I don’t intend to be confirmed till I feel I want to be confirmed.  I don’t want to be prepared for confirmation as if it was a football match.  If you force me to go to the confirmation I’ll refuse to answer the Bishop’s questions.  You can’t make me answer against my will.”

“Mark dear,” said Aunt Helen, “I think you’d better take some Eno’s Fruit Salts to-morrow morning.”  In her nephew’s present mood she did not dare to prescribe anything stronger.

“I’m not going to take anything to-morrow morning,” said Mark angrily.

“Do you want me to thrash you?” Uncle Henry demanded.

Mr. Palmer’s eyes glittered with the zeal of muscular Christianity.

“You’ll be sorry for it if you do,” said Mark.  “You can of course, if you get Mr. Palmer to help you, but you’ll be sorry if you do.”

Mr. Palmer looked at his chief as a terrier looks at his master when a rabbit is hiding in a bush.  But the headmaster’s vanity would not allow him to summon help to punish his own nephew, and he weakly contented himself with ordering Mark to be silent.

“It strikes me that Spaull is responsible for this sort of thing,” said Mr. Palmer.  “He always resented my having any hand in the religious teaching.”

“That poor worm!” Mark scoffed.

“Mark, he’s dead,” Aunt Helen gasped.  “You mustn’t speak of him like that.”

“Get out of the room and go to bed,” Uncle Henry shouted.

Mark retired with offensive alacrity, and while he was undressing he wondered drearily why he had made himself so conspicuous on this Sunday evening out of so many Sunday evenings.  What did it matter whether he were confirmed or not?  What did anything matter except to get through the next year and be finished with Haverton House?

He was more sullen than ever during the week, but on Saturday he had the satisfaction of bowling Mr. Palmer in the first innings of a match and in the second innings of hitting him on the jaw with a rising ball.