“Yes,” said Maud, “I will send it you.  It has done me good already, doing this.  It is very good of you to have suggested it—­and I like to think it may be of some use.”

“I have been with Jack all the afternoon,” said Howard, “and I am afraid he is rather vexed with me.  I can’t have that.  He drew a rather unpleasant picture of me; he seemed to think I have taken this place rather in hand from the Don’s point of view.  He thinks I should die if I were unable to improve the occasion.”

Maud looked up at him with a troubled and rather indignant air.  “Jack is perfectly horrid just now,” she said; “I can’t think what has come over him; and considering that you have been coaching him every day, and getting him shooting and fishing, it seems to me quite detestable!  I oughtn’t to say that; but you mustn’t be angry with him, Mr. Kennedy.  I think he is feeling very independent just now, and he said to me that it made him feel that he was back at school to have to go up with his books to the Manor every morning.  But he is all right really.  I am sure he is grateful; it would be too shameful if he were not.  Please don’t be vexed with him.”

Howard laughed.  “Oh, I am not vexed!  Indeed, I am rather glad he spoke out—­at my age one doesn’t often get the chance of being sincerely scolded by a perfectly frank young man.  One does get donnish and superior, no doubt, and it is useful to find it out, though it isn’t pleasant at the time.  We have made it up, and he was quite repentant; I think it is altogether natural.  It often happens with young men to get irritated with one, no doubt, but as a rule they don’t speak out; and this time he has got me between the joints of my armour.”

“Oh, dear me!” said Maud, “I think the world is rather a difficult place!  It seems ridiculous for me to say that in a place like this, when I think what might be happening if I were poor and had to earn my living.  It is silly to mind things so; but Jack accuses me of the same sort of thing.  He says that women can’t let people alone; he says that women don’t really want to do anything, but only to seem to have their way.”

“Well, then, it appears we are both in the same box,” said Howard, “and we must console each other and grieve over being so much misunderstood.”

He felt that he had spoken rather cynically, and that he had somehow hurt and checked the girl.  He did not like the thought; but he felt that he had spoken sensibly in not allowing the situation to become sentimental.  There was a little silence; and then Maud said, rather timidly:  “Do you like going back?”

“No,” said Howard, “I don’t.  I have become curiously interested in this place, and I am lazy.  Just now the life of the Don seems to me rather intolerable.  I don’t want to teach Greek prose, I don’t want to go to meetings; I don’t want to gossip about appointments, and little intrigues, and bonfires, and College rows.  I want to live here, and walk on the Downs and write my book.  I don’t want to be stuffy, as Jack said.  But it will be all right, when I have taken the plunge; and after I have been back a week, this will all fade into a sort of impossibly pleasant dream.”