“That Rupert, the best of the lot.”  What on earth had resuscitated those words?  I politely bowed them out and continued my conversation.  But the phrase had entered like a bailiff into possession of my mind.  Even as I put it from me, believing it would be lost in the flow of an absorbing conversation, I knew that there had appeared upon the horizon a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand.

“That Rupert, the best of the lot.”  The words, as first told to me by my mother, had been the dying words of my grandfather, Colonel Rupert Ray, with which he asked repeatedly for his dead son, my father.  So the words were uttered by the first Rupert Ray, applied to the second, and recalled by the third at a most inopportune moment.  And the third would have bowed them out.  Why?  Because he was a cheat?  No—­let us not be ridiculous—­because he was in the midst of an important conversation.

I pretended to listen to Penny, but really I was reasoning something else.  I was admitting that, now that this little phrase had popped up through some trap-door of my mind, my conscience, long dormant on the cheating theme, would have to be talked round again.  And, as something like suspense set in, I was anxious to join issue at once.

I left Penny abruptly and retired to a window (as you will have observed it was my fashion to do), where I leant upon the sill and prepared to argue out the problem.

Our co-operative effort to avoid preparing our lesson, was it wrong?  Yes.  In spite of the old sophistry I knew it to be so.  But what attitude should one adopt?  To refuse publicly to have any part in the system would seem like mock-heroics.  The only course open was to learn the work and earn the marks.  Inevitably I had arrived at the conclusion which I dreaded.  To learn the work seemed a task surprisingly difficult and menacing after half-a-term’s freedom.  I hugged that freedom.  I wished my calm acquiescence in the system had not been ruffled.

To learn the work—­it was a little thing surely:  to learn it unseen and alone, while other boys went free of the labour, and gave themselves the marks, notwithstanding.  But no, I could no more persuade myself that it was a little thing than I could believe that any other course was the right one.  I felt it was big—­too big for me.

Then the old thought, probably not an hour younger than sin itself, was quick to take advantage of my indecision:  I would go on as I was a little while longer—­till the end of the term—­and then begin with a clean sheet.  There was much to be said in favour of this:  for see, if I were to do the thing thoroughly this term, I ought to forgo all the marks that I had already come by dishonestly.  To do that was impossible.  The confession involved would court expulsion.  Expulsion!  As the word occurred to me, I realised the enormity of my offence.  How could I go on with that which, if detected, would mean expulsion?  To answer this