ou_ to go back to Murewell!'

'Oh, you mustn't think of me when the time comes,' said Mrs. Elsmere,
sighing. 'I shall be a tiresome old woman, and you will be a young man
a wife. There, put it out of your head, Robert. I thought I had better
tell you, for, after all, the fact may concern your Oxford life. But
you've got a long time yet before you need begin to worry about it.'

The boy drew himself up to his full height, and tossed his tumbling
reddish hair back from his eyes. He was nearly six feet already, with
a long, thin body and head which amply justified his school nickname of
'the darning-needle.'

'Don't you trouble either, mother,' he said, with a tone of decision; I
don't feel as if I should ever take Orders.'

Mrs. Elsmere was old enough to know what importance to attach to the
trenchancy of eighteen, but still the words were pleasant to her.

The next day Robert went up for examination, and after three days of
hard work, and phases of alternate hope and depression, in which mother
and son excited one another to no useful purpose, there came the anxious
crowding round the college gate in the November twilight, and the
sudden flight of dispersing messengers bearing the news over Oxford. The
scholarship had been won by a precocious Etonian with an extraordinary
talent for 'stems' and all that appertaineth thereto. But the exhibition
fell to Robert, and mother and son were well content.

The boy was eager to come into residence at once, though he would
matriculate too late to keep the term. The college authorities were
willing, and on the Saturday following the announcement of his success
he was matriculated, saw the Provost, and was informed that rooms
would be found for him without delay. His mother and he gayly climbed
innumerable stairs to inspect the garrets of which he was soon to take
proud possession, sallying forth from them only to enjoy an agitated
delightful afternoon among the shops. Expenditure, always charming,
becomes under these circumstances a sacred and pontifical act. Never had
Mrs. Elsmere bought a teapot for herself with half the fervor which she
now threw into the purchase of Robert's; and the young man, accustomed
to a rather bare home, and an Irish lack of the little elegancies
of life, was overwhelmed when his mother actually dragged him into
a printseller's, and added an engraving or two to the enticing
miscellaneous mass of which he was already master.

They only just left t