“All right,” said Howard, “I entirely understand; and look here, I am glad you said what you did.  You are not wholly wrong.  I have interfered perhaps more than I ought; but you must believe me when I say this—­that it isn’t with a managing motive.  I like people to like me; I don’t want to direct them; only one can overdo trying to make people like one, and I feel I have overdone it.  I ought to have gone to work in a different way.”

“Well, I have put my foot in it again,” said Jack; “it’s awful to think that I have been lecturing one of the Dons about his duty.  I shall be trying to brighten up their lives next.  The mischief is that I don’t think I do want people to like me.  I am not affectionate.  I only want things to go smoothly.”

They drew near to the Manor, and Jack said, “I promised Cousin Anne I would go in to tea.  She has designs on me, that woman!  She doesn’t approve of me; she says the sharpest things in her quiet way; one hardly knows she has done it, and then when one thinks of it afterwards, one finds she has drawn blood.  I am cross, I think!  There seems to be rather a set at me just now; she makes me feel as if I were in bed, being nursed and slapped.”

“Well,” said Howard, “I shall leave you to her mercies.  I shall go on to the Vicarage, and say good-bye.  I shan’t see them again this time.  You don’t mind, I hope?  I will try not to use my influence.”

“You can’t help it!” said Jack with a grimace.  “No, do go.  You will touch them up a bit.  I am not appreciated there just now.”

Howard walked on up to the Vicarage.  He was rather disturbed by Jack’s remarks; it put him, he thought, in an odious light.  Was he really so priggish and Jesuitical?  That was the one danger of the life of the Don which he hoped he had successfully avoided.  He was all for liberty, he imagined.  Was he really, after all, a mild schemer with an ethical outlook?  Was he bent on managing and uplifting people?  The idea sickened him, and he felt humiliated.

When he arrived at the Vicarage, he found the Vicar out.  Maud was alone.  This was, he confessed to himself with a strange delight, exactly what he most desired.  He would not be paternal or formative.  He would just make friends with his pretty cousin as he might with a sensible undergraduate.  With this stern resolve he entered the room.

Maud got up hastily from her chair—­she was writing in a little note-book on her knee.  “I thought I would just come in and say good-bye,” he said.  “I have to go back to Cambridge earlier than I thought, and I hoped I might just catch you and your father.”

“He will be so sorry,” said Maud; “he does enjoy meeting you.  He says it gives him so much to think about.”

“Oh, well,” said Howard, “I hope to be here again next vacation—­in June, that is.  I have got to learn my duties here as soon as I can.  I see you are hard at work.  Is that the book?  How do you get on?  You have promised to send it me, you know, as soon as you have enough in hand.”