y branch of thought and action.
One doesn't do it, but it's rather good to think one is supposed to do
it."

"Depressing enough before the event," Martin remembered nights of wild
battling with insoluble problems and days when he had gazed in despair
at papers recently set and realised his complete incapacity to inform
the examiners about modality or the legal aspects of the Caesar-Pompey
quarrel.

"You used to get jolly black?" said Lawrence, remembering silences and
outbursts or the lonely walks that Martin sometimes took.

"It's all very well for you," retorted Martin. "You may have to look
forward to dull sort of work, but you're secure enough. I'm just
beginning this business of getting a job and it's poor fun. I suppose
it means India."

"You'll get a decent screw," said Rendell by way of comfort.

"And come back without a liver or an idea."

"Except about curry and cigars."

"I can't imagine our gloomy Martin as a sun-dried bureaucrat," Lawrence
remarked. "But I suppose he'll have punkahs and khitmutgars and syces
and be the devil of a chap. I daresay it's all right when you're
there."

"There are few people who loathe the British Empire more cordially than
I do," said Martin. "But there seems to be no way of keeping clear of
it. Anyway I've quite settled not to starve as a journalist. Sooner
the White Man's Burden than that."

"Anyhow," said Rendell, still eager to comfort, "we don't know anything
about the Burden, do we? There may be something in it."

"Well, one thing is quite plain," asserted Martin, "there's no charity
going as far as I am concerned. If I have to go and live in a dirty
hot hole I go there because I can't get a decent living otherwise. I
go on the make and I'll resign as soon as I can get the thousand that
they're always chattering about. None of your Burden for me."

"To gather from what one sees," said Lawrence, "the Burden doesn't
weigh very heavily on the shoulders of the big pots. They seem to do
themselves pretty well."

"Of course they do. That's what they go for. How many varsity men
would go abroad if they could live in comfort and get the same wage at
home? Not ten per cent. And who can blame them? India pays, and it
pays for hard, dangerous, useful work. I don't mind men going for the
pay, but I do mind journalists blithering about their self-devotion in
taking up the noble load."

"All the same," said Rendell cheerily, "you've quite a good chanc