le
creatures from Balliol, who think of nothing else but these pots.
You're wasting valuable time, failing to improve your execrable tennis,
and demeaning yourself into the bargain. I wouldn't compete with those
swine."

Of course Rendell took no notice and continued to read the more obscure
Romans. But Lawrence was right; he did himself no good.

In June Martin went down to Devonshire. Only his uncle and aunt were
at home: Margaret was abroad and Robert was working in chambers in
town. Martin had much time for recalling the past and considering the
future. He saw now that a day of reckoning was at hand. For two
years, with the exception of a few weeks, he had taken life very, very
easily, and it was inevitable that he should begin to take it with
corresponding seriousness. He would have to settle down: his second in
Mods had been a fluky affair, based rather on previous knowledge than
on any real work done at Oxford. "Greats" would depend on genuine
reading, and after Greats the Civil--and his livelihood. Probably he
would have to go to India: how unthinkable it all was! Martin thought
of India as a very hot place, where you either died before you got your
pension or sat in clubs drinking whisky and soda with bullet-headed
soldiers who didn't know the difference between Chopin and Cezanne,
didn't know probably that such people had been. The future became
hatefully plain. Either he would fail for the Civil and go to slave
dismally at Wren's or else he would pass and go out to Colonels or to
death. He wanted none of these things: he wanted books and friends and
work in London, just enough work to neglect. It was scarcely possible
for him to get a job at home and he hadn't money enough for the Bar.
In fact he hadn't a penny, and he knew that his uncle couldn't help
him: as it was, Mr Berrisford had been more than generous.

It was a bad prospect. To make matters worse, he set out to read
Herodotus. He had been told that Herodotus was the jolliest man on
earth (of course by Petworth) and he expected a treat. He found two
immense volumes about nothing in particular, which contained a
description of the world, occasionally amusing but more often fruitful
only of hard words. What it all had to do with the Greek states and
why the father of history had chosen to write almost anything but
history, and that in the most muddled way possible, he found it hard to
discover. And then he tried the ethics of Arist