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left. Jeep—Mr. Jepson can’t even see how you’ve pulled the place together. You are the House really, everybody knows that. He doesn’t seem ever to notice the things that really matter, the feeling in the place, and giving the new people a start. You know the sort of thing that was thought to be smart here before you took over. Peterson and that lot. Jeepers hasn’t a clue. He’s all taken up with the moral tone. There wasn’t any moral tone when Mr. Stuart was here. The place was just normal.”
    “Quite the budding analyst.” Laurie knew suddenly that he had been talking too much, too loudly, and too long, to someone who was very tired. “So you think that Mr. Jepson has an anxiety neurosis, due to being oversensitive to a certain weakness in the system he represents.”
    “Yes,” said Laurie recklessly.
    “In view of which, you’re proposing to take on the whole foundations of society single-handed. My strength is as the strength of ten …” He gave a tight little smile, which went out quickly. With a change of tone he said, “You’re an orphan, I take it?”
    “No,” said Laurie. “It’s only my father who’s dead.”
    “Your surviving family,” said Lanyon carefully, “will be putting down the red carpet, I suppose, when you go home expelled in a couple of days’ time?”
    Laurie said nothing. He had a sudden, horribly clear vision of his mother’s face.
    Watching him, Lanyon said, “Yes, it’s about time you woke up.”
    “I could explain,” said Laurie dully. He tried, desperately, not to imagine it.
    “Oh, don’t be a fool. Admit it’s washed up, and let’s finish with this nonsense. You’re wasting my time, I’ve got a lot to do.”
    Suddenly Laurie’s exhilaration returned. It was worth it; anything was worth it. Tomorrow could take care of itself.
    “No,” he said. “You’re Head of the House, and you’ve got to stop a row if you can. But the House isn’t bound to stand by and see them do this to you and do nothing about it. We’d look like a lot of worms if we did. It doesn’t matter what happens. It just isn’t fair.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    Laurie noticed that he had got the pencil out again, and was screwing the lead up and down. He seemed absorbed in this. It made Laurie feel as if he were confronting a vacuum. He wondered if he were meant to go. But one always waited for explicit permission. “Of course it’s not fair,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
    “And being such a good psychologist”—Lanyon pushed down the lead more firmly—“you feel sure that a poor helpless type like myself will naturally let himself be expelled for something he hasn’t done, unless people like you dash up with a rescue party?”
    A bright ray of hope shot up in Laurie’s mind. How absurd not to have thought that Lanyon could look after himself; and why should he confide his plans to his inferiors? So long as it was going to be all right … but he wished Lanyon would look up. “I only thought,” he said to fill in the pause, “it was a thing the House ought to get together on.”
    “So I gathered.” Lanyon raised his eyes. The hard, blue shine had gone. They looked tired, almost gray. “Let me see; is it Cambridge, or Oxford, you’re going to sit for?”
    “Oxford,” said Laurie, now quite at sea.
    Lanyon leaned an arm on the empty mantelshelf: the room, Laurie realized now, was stripped almost to the bareness of vacant possession. “Yes,” he said unemotionally. “Oxford, of course. You ought to fit in well there. It’s the home of lost causes, so they say.”
    There was silence. In the last ten minutes, Laurie had almost exhausted his capacity for taking in new experience. He knew what he was being told, and it seemed now that he must have known for at least some seconds beforehand. But he had reached a full stop. He couldn’t make it mean anything.
    “Too bad, Spuddy.” Lanyon smiled, it seemed from a long way off. “You’ll have to hang the shillelagh up