"When I was in London I never buttered a bit. All done for you.
Wonnerful how they encourage laziness in the city." Edward John had need
to remind them that he had been to London; for Henry had actually spent
two summer holidays there instead of coming to Hampton, and the glory of
his father's visit was in danger of being tarnished.

"Still thinking o' going to London some day for good, I suppose?" he
went on.

"Oh, of course; but the fact is that the more I learn of journalism the
more difficult London seems. It is all plain sailing at eighteen; but at
twenty-two ... well, I'm just beginning to think I'm not a heaven-born
genius, dad."

"But it ain't what you think about yourself that matters."

"That's just what does matter--in journalism. I've learned one great
thing since leaving home. The world takes a man pretty much at his own
valuation. A fool who takes himself seriously is like to be taken
seriously by other fools, and you know how many fools there are in
England according to Carlyle."

"Well, then, if you are a fool, try it," retorted the postmaster
merrily.

"But a wise man, who thinks himself a fool, is likely to be thought a
fool by--"

"Wise men?"

"Perhaps by them also; but certainly by the fools, who are in the
majority."

"Nonsense, my lad! Was it for this I paid that Springthorpe fellow
five-and-twenty pounds?"

"Henry's only joking, dad," Dora suggested. Her sense of humour was not
magnetic.

"A jest in earnest, Dora; for the more one learns the less one knows."

An amazing fellow: a veritable changeling this Henry! His mother watched
him almost like a stranger.

"Rank heresy, now, you're talking. I wunner what old Mr. Needham would
say to that?" exclaimed his father, who had a fear that his son had
grown a trifle conceited.

"That I had learned a lot since you wanted him to tackle me on Virgil.
But I like my work for all that; in fact, because of it. It is about the
only kind of work in which one is learning every day; and I'm beginning
to think that the real fun of life is not the knowledge of things so
much as the getting to know them."

"Well, look 'ere, 'Enry. You're dragging your poor old father out into
deep waters, an' you know he can't swim. You're talking like one of your
articles. For I read 'em all that you mark with blue pencil, and your
mother keeps 'em, even when she's hard up for paper to light the fire."

Henry wondered in his heart if, at a pinch, she would