No More Learning

The pace
that season was too good to inquire; and meddling with another man's
folly is always thankless work.

Pluffles' Colonel should have ordered him back to his regiment when he
heard how things were going. But Pluffles had got himself engaged to a
girl in England the last time he went home; and if there was one
thing more than another which the Colonel detested, it was a married
subaltern. He chuckled when he heard of the education of Pluffles, and
said it was "good training for the boy. " But it was not good training in
the least. It led him into spending money beyond his means, which were
good: above that, the education spoilt an average boy and made it a
tenth-rate man of an objectionable kind. He wandered into a bad set, and
his little bill at Hamilton's was a thing to wonder at.

Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occasion. She played her game alone,
knowing what people would say of her; and she played it for the sake of
a girl she had never seen. Pluffles' fiancee was to come out, under the
chaperonage of an aunt, in October, to be married to Pluffles.

At the beginning of August, Mrs. Hauksbee discovered that it was time to
interfere. A man who rides much knows exactly what a horse is going to
do next before he does it. In the same way, a woman of Mrs.
Hauksbee's
experience knows accurately how a boy will behave under certain
circumstances--notably when he is infatuated with one of Mrs. Reiver's
stamp. She said that, sooner or later, little Pluffles would break off
that engagement for nothing at all--simply to gratify Mrs. Reiver, who,
in return, would keep him at her feet and in her service just so long as
she found it worth her while.

She said she knew the signs of these things. If she did not, no one else
could.

Then she went forth to capture Pluffles under the guns of the enemy;
just as Mrs. Cusack-Bremmil carried away Bremmil under Mrs. Hauksbee's
eyes.

This particular engagement lasted seven weeks--we called it the Seven
Weeks' War--and was fought out inch by inch on both sides. A detailed
account would fill a book, and would be incomplete then.

Any one who knows about these things can fit in the details for himself.
It was a superb fight--there will never be another like it as long as
Jakko stands--and Pluffles was the prize of victory.

People said shameful things about Mrs. Hauksbee. They did not know what
she was playing for.