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Clyde-Browne. 'He's a delicate, sensitive '
    'Animal,' said her husband, whose views on his son coincided entirely with the Doctor's.
    'Exactly,' said Dr Hardboldt. 'Now where most teachers go wrong is in failing to apply the

methods used in animal training to their pupils. If a seal can be taught to balance a ball on its

nose, a boy can be taught to pass exams.'
    'But the questions are surely different every year,' said Mr Clyde-Browne.
    Dr Hardboldt shook his head. 'They can't be. If they were, no one could possibly teach the

answers. Those are the rules of the game.'
    'I hope you're right,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne.
    'Madam, I am,' said the Doctor. 'Time will prove it.'
    And time, as far as Peregrine was concerned, did. He returned to Groxbourne a month late and,

with the air of a sleepwalker, took his O-level exams with every sign that this time he would

succeed. Even the Headmaster, glancing through the papers before sending them off to the external

examiners, was impressed. 'If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it

possible,' he muttered, and immediately wrote to the Clyde-Brownes to assure them that they could

go ahead with their plans to enter Peregrine for the Army.
    Mr Clyde-Browne read the letter with delight. 'He's done it. By golly, he's done it,' he

whooped.
    'Of course he has,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne, 'I always knew he was gifted.'
    Mr Clyde-Browne stopped whooping. 'Not him...'he began and decided to say no more.

Chapter 7
    But Peregrine's future was being decided by more subtle influences than those of the military

Doctor. Mr Glodstone had spent the holidays in search, as he put it, 'of some damned woman' to

marry. The dung is one doesn't want to marry beneath one,' he confided to Major Fetherington over

several nightcaps of whisky in his rooms.
    'Absolutely,' said the Major, whose wife had died of boredom ten years before. 'Still, if

there's lead in your pencil, you've got to make your mark somewhere.'
    Glodstone glanced at him dubiously. The Major's metaphor was too coarse for his romantic

imagination. 'Perhaps, but love's got to be there too. I mean, only a cad would marry a girl he

didn't love, don't you think?'
    'Suppose so,' said the Major, enjoying the whisky too much to argue from his own experience.

'Still, a fellow's got to think of the future. Knew a chap once, must have been eighty if he was

a day, keen tennis-player in his time, married a woman he happened to be sitting next to in the

Centre Court at Wimbledon. Splendid match. Died in her arms a fortnight later desperately in

love. Never can tell till you try.'
    Glodstone considered the moral of this example and found it hardly illuminating. 'That sort of

thing doesn't happen to me,' he said and put the cap back on the whisky bottle.
    The trouble with you,' said the Major, 'is that you've got champagne tastes and a beer income.

My advice is to lower your sights. Still, you never know. Chance has a funny way of arranging

things.'
    For once Mr Slymne would have shared Glodstone's unspoken disagreement. He was leaving as

little as possible to chance. Having discovered Glodstone's wildly romantic streak, he was

determined to exploit it, but there were still problems to cope with. The first concerned Sports

Day. La Comtesse de Montcon might put in an appearance, and if the wretched woman turned out to

be as formidable as the conversation he had overheard in the house-room suggested, all his

preparations would be wasted. Glodstone would hardly go to the aid of a woman who was manifestly

capable of looking after herself. No, it was vital that the image in Glodstone's imagination

should be that of a poor, defenceless, or to be exact, a rich defenceless sylph-like creature

with an innocence beyond belief. Slymne had a shrewd idea that La Comtesse was more robust. Any

mother who could send her son to Groxbourne had to be. Slymne checked his dossier and found that

Tambon had