had counted on Endymion obtaining some holidays in
the usual recess, but in consequence of having so recently joined the
office, Endymion was retained for summer and autumnal work, and not
until Christmas was there any prospect of his returning home.

The interval between midsummer and that period, though not devoid of
seasons of monotony and loneliness, passed in a way not altogether
unprofitable to Endymion. Waldershare, who had begun to notice him,
seemed to become interested in his career. Waldershare knew all about
his historic ancestor, Endymion Carey. The bubbling imagination of
Waldershare clustered with a sort of wild fascination round a living
link with the age of the cavaliers. He had some Stuart blood in his
veins, and his ancestors had fallen at Edgehill and Marston Moor.
Waldershare, whose fancies alternated between Stafford and St. Just,
Archbishop Laud and the Goddess of Reason, reverted for the moment to
his visions on the banks of the Cam, and the brilliant rhapsodies of
his boyhood. His converse with Nigel Penruddock had prepared Endymion in
some degree for these mysteries, and perhaps it was because Waldershare
found that Endymion was by no means ill-informed on these matters, and
therefore there was less opportunity of dazzling and moulding him, which
was a passion with Waldershare, that he soon quitted the Great Rebellion
for pastures new, and impressed upon his pupil that all that had
occurred before the French Revolution was ancient history. The French
Revolution had introduced the cosmopolitan principle into human affairs
instead of the national, and no public man could succeed who did not
comprehend and acknowledge that truth. Waldershare lent Endymion books,
and book with which otherwise he would not have become acquainted.
Unconsciously to himself, the talk of Waldershare, teeming with
knowledge, and fancy, and playfulness, and airy sarcasm of life, taught
him something of the art of conversation--to be prompt without being
stubborn, to refute without argument, and to clothe grave matters in a
motley garb.

But in August Waldershare disappeared, and at the beginning of
September, even the Rodneys had gone to Margate. St. Barbe was the only
clerk left in Endymion's room. They dined together almost every day, and
went on the top of an omnibus to many a suburban paradise. "I tell
you what," said St. Barbe, as they were watching one day together
the humours of the world in the crowded tea-garde