ught
in peace and even made Cartwright begin to display a keen interest in
Pindar. It was a thorough change and altered the whole aspect of
Finney's work: he could forget the unspeakable Fourth-formers if he
could really care about his work for the Sixth. His relief was
obvious, and Martin, eagerly watching for every expression of it, felt
justly grateful.

Finney could not guess the real cause of the new behaviour. For a
moment he thought that perhaps his manner was becoming more imperious
and that he had made definite progress in his efforts to acquire
authority. But, on reflection, he had to abandon this flattering
hypothesis, and he ultimately attributed the change to the growth of a
collective conscience and the recognition that scholarship exams were
dangerously near and that it might be as well to work seriously. That
he could have made such a mistake showed that he still had much to
learn about his pupils. But, from the pragmatic standpoint, his
ignorance was for his own good: had he known that he was merely the
recipient of charity, 'the something bitter' might have risen and
destroyed the new-born happiness.

XI

In December Martin, who was now seventeen and a half years old, went up
to Oxford to compete for a scholarship in Classics. Foskett had
encouraged him to wait another year, but John Berrisford held that boys
should be free from the pettiness of school life before they were
nineteen and advised Martin to go up early: this course would give him
another twelve months for Civil Service preparation if necessary.
Martin himself had no desire for another year at Elfrey, for, without
positively disliking the place, he wanted freedom. His prefecture had
brought him more trouble than release, and the Finneys, while they had
undoubtedly refined his tastes and broadened his views, had also
inevitably rendered him more discontented with the limitations of a
society which drove him to silence or to crudity.

Martin was not a remarkable classic and never learned to sympathise
with the somewhat pedantic traditions of a classical training, nor had
he the imitative faculty necessary for the composition of good prose
and verse in Greek or Latin; his work was always sound and often
interesting; but he never acquired the infallible dexterity of touch
which is the fruit of perfect sympathy with classical modes of thought
and expression. His translation into English showed more style than
accuracy, and