"Weston?" cried Rupert. "I hope to goodness, Charlie, you've not been
playing the fool?"

"You can ask them," said I, and tossing my head I went to my proper
place.

For the rest of school-time I wore a lofty and Rupert an anxious
demeanour. Secure on the level of a higher friendship, I was mean
enough to snub the friendly advances of one or two of the younger
boys.

When we went home at night, I found my mother much more ready than
Rupert to believe that my merits had gained for me the regard of two
of the upper boys. I was exultingly happy. Not a qualm disturbed the
waking dreams in which (after I was in bed) I retold my family tale at
even greater length than before, except that I remembered one or two
incidents, which in the excitement of the hour I had forgotten when in
school.

I was rather sorry, too, that, bound by the strictest of injunctions
from Rupert and my own promise, I had not been able, ever so casually,
to make my new friends aware that among my other advantages was that
of being first cousin to a peer, the very one who lived at the Castle.
The Castle was a show place, and I knew that many of my schoolfellows
were glad enough to take their friends and go themselves to be shown
by the housekeeper the pictures of _my_ ancestors. On this point they
certainly had an advantage over me. I had not seen the pictures. Our
cousin never called on us, and never asked us to the Castle, and of
course we could not go to our father's old home like common