pared to find themselves so much at a disadvantage. This was the
only notice that was taken of his downfall at home, where there was no
academical ambition, and where everybody was quite satisfied so long as
he kept his health and did not get into any scrape. Perhaps this made
him feel it all the more, that his disappointment and disenchantment
were entirely shut up in his own bosom, and that he could not confide to
any one the terrible disillusionment that had befallen him on the very
threshold of his life. That the Rector should pass him with the slightest
possible nod, and his tutor say "How d'ye do, Warrender?" without even a
smile when they met, was nothing to anybody except himself. Arm in arm
with Brunson, the don would give him that salutation. Brunson, who had
got his first in Mods, and was going on placidly, admired of all, to
another first in the final schools.

But if there was any one who understood Warrender's feelings it was this
same Brunson, who was in his way an honest fellow, and understood the
situation. "It is all pot-hunting, you know," this youth said. "They
don't care for me any more than they care for Jenkinson. It's all for
what I bring to the college, just as it was for what they expected
you were going to bring to the college; only I understood it, and you
didn't. I don't care for them any more than they do for me. Why, they
might see, if they had any sense, that to work at you, who care for that
sort of thing, would be far better than to bother me, who only care for
what it will bring. If they had stuck to you they might have done a deal
with you, Warrender: whereas I should have done just the same whether
they took any notice of me or not."

"You mean to say I'm an empty-headed fool that could be cajoled into
anything!" cried the other angrily.

"I mean nothing of the sort. I mean that I'm going to be a schoolmaster,
and that first classes, etc., are my stock in trade. You don't suppose I
work to please the Rector? And I know, and he knows, and you know, that
I don't know a tenth part so much as you do. If they had held on at you,
Theo, they might have got a great scholar out of you. But that's not what
they want. They want so many firsts, and the Hertford, and the Ireland,
and all the rest of it. It's all pot-hunting," Mr. Brunson said. But this
did not lessen the effect of the disenchantment, the first disappointment
of life. Poor Theo became prone to suspect everybody after that first