approaches with distrust and hostility. Mary, how am I to live it
down?"

"You speak as if it were a crime!"

"I feel as if it were one. Not of mine, but of the pedagogic race
before me, who have spoilt the relations between man and boy; so that
I cannot even get one to act as a medium."

"That would be contrary to esprit de corps."

"Exactly; and the worst of it is, I am not one of those genial
fellows, half boys themselves, who can join in the sports con amore;
I should only make a mountebank of myself if I tried, and the boys
would distrust me the more."

"Quite true. The only way is to be oneself, and one's best self, and
the rest will come."

"I'm not so sure of that. Some people mistake their vocation."

"Well, when you have given it a fair trial, you can turn to something
else. You are getting the school up again, which is at least one
testimony."

David Ogilvie made a sound as if this were very base kind of solace,
and his sister did not wonder when she remembered the bright hopes
and elaborate theories with which he had undertaken the mastership
only nine months ago. He was then fresh from the university, and the
loss of constant intercourse with congenial minds had perhaps