Dunstable had his reasons for wishing to obtain Mr. Montagu Watson's
autograph, but admiration for that gentleman's novels was not one of
them.

It was nothing to him that critics considered Mr. Watson one of the
most remarkable figures in English literature since Scott. If you had
told him of this, he would merely have wondered in his coarse,
material way how much Mr. Watson gave the critics for saying so. To
the reviewer of the _Weekly Booklover_ the great man's latest
effort, "The Soul of Anthony Carrington" (Popgood and Grooly: 6s.)
seemed "a work that speaks eloquently in every line of a genius that
time cannot wither nor custom stale." To Dunstable, who got it out of
the school library, where it had been placed at the request of a
literary prefect, and read the first eleven pages, it seemed rot, and
he said as much to the librarian on returning it.

Yet he was very anxious to get the novelist's autograph. The fact was
that Mr. Day, his house-master, a man whose private life was in other
ways unstained by vicious habits, collected autographs. Also Mr. Day
had behaved in a square manner towards Dunstable on several occasions
in the past, and Dunstable, always ready to punish bad behaviour in a
master, was equally anxious to reward and foster any good trait which
he might exhibit.

On the occasion of the announcement that Mr. Watson had taken the big
white house near Chesterton, a couple of miles from the school, Mr.
Day had expressed in Dunstable's hearing a wish that he could add that
celebrity's signature to his collection. Dunstable had instantly