a scholar.'

'A scholar is a kind of woman. A man, when he's a boy, only works
because he can't help it, and afterwards for what he can get by it.'

'For what he can do with it would have a worthier sound.'

'Sound or sense, it is all the same.'

'Scaffolding granted, what is the building?'

Tom apparently thought it would be working like a woman to give himself
the trouble of answering; and Ethel went on in her own mind, 'For the
work's own sake--for what can be got by it--for what can be done with
it--because it can't be helped--are--these all the springs of labour
here? Then how is work done in that solitary cell? Is it because it
can't be helped, or is it 'as the Lord's freeman'? And when he can
hear of Aubrey's change, will he take it as out of his love, or grieve
for having been the cause?'

For the change had been working in Aubrey ever since Leonard had
altered his career. The boy was at a sentimental age, and had the
susceptibility inseparable from home breeding; his desire to become a
clergyman had been closely connected with the bright visions of the
happy days at Coombe, and had begun to wane with the first thwarting of
Leonard's plans; and when the terrible catastrophe of the one friend's
life occurred, the other became alienated from all that they had hoped
to share together. Nor could even Dr. May's household be so wholly
exempt from the spirit of the age, that Aubrey was not aware of the
strivings and trials of faith at the University. He saw what Harvey
Anderson was, and knew what was passing in the world; and while free
from all doubts, shrank boyishly from the investigations that he
fancied might excite them. Or perhaps these fears of possible scruples
were merely his self-justification for gratifying his reluctance.

At any rate, he came home from his two months' tour, brown, robust,
with revived spirits, but bent on standing an examination for the
academy at Woolwich. He had written about it several times before his
return, and his letters were, as his father said, 'so appallingly
sensible that perhaps he would change his mind.' But it was not
changed when he came home; and Ethel, though sorely disappointed, was
convinced by her own sense as well as by Richard's prudence, that
interference was dangerous. No one in Israel was to go forth to the
wars of the Lord save those who 'willingly offered themselves;' and
though grieved that her own young knight should be one of the many
cham