that. If you like to take it, well and
good; if not, I've done with you this time once for all. You go on and
work 'ard at this Law till you've served your time out, or kept your
terms, or whatever they call it, and when you get called you can give
'em notice to quit at your school. _I'll_ pay your fees and see you
started in chambers till you're able to run alone. Only, and mind
this, no more of your scribbling--drop that littery rubbish once for
all, and I stand by you; go on at it, and I leave you to go to the
dogs your own way. That's my offer, and I mean it.'

There are few things so unpleasantly corrective to one's self-esteem
as a letter of rejection such as had come to Mark--the refusal of the
school committee was insignificant in comparison; only those who have
yielded to the subtle temptation to submit manuscript to an editor or
a publisher's reader, and have seen it return in dishonour, can quite
realise the dull anguish of it, the wild, impotent rebellion that
follows, and the stunned sense that all one's ideas will have somehow
to be readjusted; perhaps an artist whose pictures are not hung feels
something of it, but there one's wounded vanity can more easily find
salves.

Mark felt the blow very keenly; for weeks he had been building hopes
on these unfortunate manuscripts of his; he had sent both to a firm
under whose auspices he was particularly anxious to come before the
world, in the hope that one at least would find favour with them, and
now the two had been unequivocally declined; for a moment his
confidence in himself was shaken, and he almost accepted the verdict.

And yet he hesitated still: the publisher might be wrong; he had heard
of books riding out several such storms and sailing in triumphantly at
last. There was Carlyle, there was Charlotte Bronte, and other
instances occurred to him. And he longed for speedy fame, and the law
was a long avenue to it.

'You hear what your uncle says?' said his mother. 'Surely you won't
refuse a chance like this.'

'Yes, he will,' said Martha. 'Mark would rather write novels than
work, wouldn't you, Mark? It must be so amusing to write things which
will never be read, I'm sure.'

'Leave Mark alone, Martha,' said Trixie. 'It's a shame--it is.'

'I don't know why you should all be down on me like this,' said Mark;
'there's nothing positively immoral in writing books--at least when it
never goes any further. But I daresay you're right, and I believe
_y