sion to know how to shut his eyes to things that were
inconvenient--no clergyman could keep his benefice for a month if he
could not do this; besides he had allowed himself for so many years to
say things he ought not to have said, and not to say the things he ought
to have said, that he was little likely to see anything that he thought
it more convenient not to see unless he was made to do so.

It was not much that was wanted. To make no mysteries where Nature has
made none, to bring his conscience under something like reasonable
control, to give Ernest his head a little more, to ask fewer questions,
and to give him pocket money with a desire that it should be spent upon
_menus plaisirs_ . . .

"Call that not much indeed," laughed Ernest, as I read him what I have
just written. "Why it is the whole duty of a father, but it is the
mystery-making which is the worst evil. If people would dare to speak to
one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the
world a hundred years hence."

To return, however, to Roughborough. On the day of his leaving, when he
was sent for into the library to be shaken hands with, he was surprised
to feel that, though assuredly glad to leave, he did not do so with any
especial grudge against the Doctor rankling in his breast. He had come
to the end of it all, and was still alive, nor, take it all round, more
seriously amiss than other people. Dr Skinner received him graciously,
and was even frolicsome after his own heavy fashion. Young people are
almost always placable, and Ernest felt as he went away that another such
interview would not only have wiped off all old scores, but have brought
him round into the ranks of the Doctor's admirers and supporters--among
whom it is only fair to say that the greater number of the more promising
boys were found.

Just before saying good-bye the Doctor actually took down a volume from
those shelves which had seemed so awful six years previously, and gave it
to him after having written his name in it, and the words [Greek text],
which I believe means "with all kind wishes from the donor." The book
was one written in Latin by a German--Schomann: "De comitiis
Atheniensibus"--not exactly light and cheerful reading, but Ernest felt
it was high time he got to understand the Athenian constitution and
manner of voting; he had got them up a great many times already, but had
forgotten them as fast as he had learned them; now, however,