“I know,” he said.  “Yes, of course I was a fool; but it isn’t worth making a row about.  I don’t go in for soaking, like some of the men who don’t get caught, and I have no intention of going to the bad, if that is what you mean.”

“You are an ass!” said Howard, “a real ass!  Now don’t say a word yet, till I have told you what I think.  You may have your say afterwards.  I don’t care twopence about your getting drunk once in a way.  It’s a stupid thing to do, to my mind, and I don’t see the point of it.  I don’t consider you a reprobate, nor am I going to take a high line about drunkenness; I know perfectly well that you are no more likely to take to drink than the Master is.  But it isn’t good enough.  You put yourself on the wrong side, you give people a wrong idea of yourself.  You get disapproved of by all the stupid and ordinary people who don’t know you.  Your father will be in an awful state of mind.  It’s an experiment, I suppose?  I imagine you thought you would like to see how it felt to be drunk?  Well, living at close quarters like this, that sort of thing can’t be done.  And then you were rude to Gretton.  What’s the point of that?  He is a very good fellow, minds his own business, doesn’t interfere, and keeps things very straight here.  That part of it seems to me simply ungentlemanly.  And in any case, you have no business to hurt the people who care for you, even if you think they ought not to be distressed.  I don’t say it is immoral, but I say it is a low business from beginning to end.”

Jack, who bore signs of his overnight experience, gave Howard a smile.  “That’s all right!” he said.  “I don’t object to that!  You have rather taken the wind out of my sails.  If you had said I was a sensual brute, I should have just laughed.  It is such nonsense the way these men go on!  Why I was lunching with Gretton the other day, and Corry told a story about Wordsworth as an undergraduate getting drunk in Milton’s rooms at Christ’s, and how proud the old man was of it to the end of his life.  Gretton laughed, and thought it a joke; and then when one gets roaring drunk, they turn up their eyes and say it is unmanly and so on.  Why can’t they stick to one line?  If you go to bump-suppers and dinners, and just manage to carry your liquor, they think you a good sort of fellow, with no sort of nonsense about you—­’a little natural boyish excitement’—­you know the sort of rot.  One glass more, and you are among the sinners.”

“I know,” said Howard, “and I perceive that I have had the benefit of your thought-out oration after all!”

Jack smiled rather sheepishly, and then said, “Well, what’s to be done?  Am I to be sent down?”

“Not if you do the right thing,” said Howard.  “You must just go to Gretton and say you are very sorry you got drunk, and still more sorry you were impertinent.  If you can contrive to show him that you think him a good fellow, and are really vexed to have been such a bounder, so much the better.  That I leave to your natural eloquence.  But you will be gated, and he will write to your father.”