From my affairs we came to talk of Jem’s, and I found that even he, poor chap! was not without his troubles.  He confided to me, with many expressions of shame and vexation, that he had got into debt, but having brought home good reports and even a prize on this occasion, he hoped to persuade my father to pay what he owed.

“You see, Jack, he’s awfully good to me, but he will do things his own way, and what’s worse, the way they were done in his young days.  You remember the row we had about his giving me an allowance?  He didn’t want to, because he never had one, only tips from his governor when the old gentleman was pleased with him.  And he said it was quite enough to send me to such a good and expensive school, and I ought to think of that, and not want more because I had got much.  We’d an awful row, for I thought it was so unfair his making out I was greedy and ungrateful, and I told him so, and I said I was quite game to go to a cheap school if he liked, only wherever I was I did want to be ‘like the other fellows.’  I begged him to take me away and to let me go somewhere cheap with you; and I said, if the fellows there had no allowances, we could do without.  As I told him, it’s not the beastly things that you buy that you care about, only of course you don’t like to be the only fellow who can’t buy ’em.  So then he came round, and said I should have an allowance, but I must do with a very small one.  So I said, Very well, then I mustn’t go in for the games.  Then he wouldn’t have that; so then I made out a list of what the subscriptions are to cricket, and so on, and then your flannels and shoes, and it came to double what he offered me.  He said it was simply disgraceful that boys shouldn’t be able to be properly educated, and have an honest game at cricket for the huge price he paid, without the parents being fleeced for all sorts of extravagances at exorbitant prices.  And I know well enough it’s disgraceful, what we have to pay for school books and for things of all sorts you have to get in the town; but, as I said to the governor, why don’t you kick up a dust with the head master, or write to the papers—­what’s the good of rowing us?  One must have what other fellows have, and get ’em where other fellows get ’em.  But he never did—­I wish he would.  I should enjoy fighting old Pompous if I were in his place.  But they’re as civil as butter to each other, and then old Pompous goes on feathering his nest, and backing up the tradespeople, and the governor pitches into the young men of the present day.”

“He did give you the bigger allowance, didn’t he?” said I, at this pause in Jem’s rhetoric.

“Yes, he did.  He’s awfully good to me.  But you know, Jack, he never paid it quite all, and he never paid it quite in time.  I found out from my mother he did it on purpose to make me value it more, and be more careful.  Doesn’t it seem odd he shouldn’t see that I can’t pay the subscriptions a few shillings short or a few days late?  One must find the money somehow, and then one has to pay for that, and then you’re short, and go on tick, and it runs up, and then they dun you, and you’re cleaned out, and there you are!”