"Not still hankering after a lighthouse?" Uncle Henry asked, and one seemed to hear his words snapping like dry twigs beneath the heavy tread of his mind.
"I'm not hankering after anything," Mark replied sullenly.
"But you're looking forward to Mr. Hitchcock's office?" his uncle proceeded.
Mark grunted an assent in order to be left alone, and the entrance of Mr. Palmer who always had supper with his headmaster and employer on Sunday evening, brought the conversation to a close.
At supper Mr. Palmer asked suddenly if the headmaster wanted Mark to go into the Confirmation Class this term.
"Neither my father nor my mother nor my grandfather would have wanted me to be confirmed against my will," Mark declared. He was angry without knowing his reasons, angry in response to some impulse of the existence of which he had been unaware until he began to speak. He only knew that if he surrendered on this point he should never be able to act for himself again.
"Are you suggesting that you should never be confirmed?" his uncle required.
"I'm not suggesting anything," said Mark. "But I can remember my father's saying once that boys ought to be confirmed before they are thirteen. My mother just before she died wanted me to be confirmed, but it couldn't be arranged, and now I don't intend to be confirmed till I feel I want to be confirmed. I don't want to be prepared for confirmation as if it was a football match. If you force me to go to the confirmation I'll refuse to answer the Bishop's questions. You can't make me answer against my will."
"Mark dear," said Aunt Helen, "I think you'd better take some Eno's Fruit Salts to-morrow morning." In her nephew's present mood she did not dare to prescribe anything stronger.
"I'm not going to take anything to-morrow morning," said Mark angrily.
"Do you want me to thrash you?" Uncle Henry demanded.
Mr. Palmer's eyes glittered with the zeal of muscular Christianity.
"You'll be sorry for it if you do," said Mark. "You can of course, if you get Mr. Palmer to help you, but you'll be sorry if you do."
Mr. Palmer looked at his chief as a terrier looks at his master when a rabbit is hiding in a bush. But the headmaster's vanity would not allow him to summon help to punish his own nephew, and he weakly contented himself with ordering Mark to be silent.