ad urged him
to do good! With a vehemence that surprised her, he exclaimed, "I'll do
it."

"Think it over," she cautioned, though she was greatly pleased.

"No; I think over things too much."

The room grew brighter. A boy's laughter floated in, and it seemed to
him that people were as important and vivid as they had been six months
before. Then he was at Cambridge, idling in the parsley meadows, and
weaving perishable garlands out of flowers. Now he was at Sawston,
preparing to work a beneficent machine. No man works for nothing, and
Rickie trusted that to him also benefits might accrue; that his wound
might heal as he laboured, and his eyes recapture the Holy Grail.

XVII

In practical matters Mr. Pembroke was often a generous man. He offered
Rickie a good salary, and insisted on paying Agnes as well. And as he
housed them for nothing, and as Rickie would also have a salary from the
school, the money question disappeared--if not forever, at all events
for the present.

"I can work you in," he said. "Leave all that to me, and in a few days
you shall hear from the headmaster. He shall create a vacancy. And once
in, we stand or fall together. I am resolved on that."

Rickie did not like the idea of being "worked in," but he was determined
to raise no difficulties. It is so easy to be refined and high-minded
when we have nothing to do. But the active, useful man cannot be equally
particular. Rickie's programme involved a change in values as well as a
change of occupation.

"Adopt a frankly intellectual attitude," Mr. Pembroke continued. "I do
not advise you at present even to profess any interest in athletics or
organization. When the headmaster writes, he will probably ask whether
you are an all-round man. Boldly say no. A bold 'no' is at times the
best. Take your stand upon classics and general culture."

Classics! A second in the Tripos. General culture. A smattering of
English Literature, and less than a smattering of French.

"That is how we begin. Then we get you a little post--say that of
librarian. And so on, until you are indispensable."

Rickie laughed; the headmaster wrote, the reply was satisfactory, and in
due course the new life began.

Sawston was already familiar to him. But he knew it as an amateur, and
under an official gaze it grouped itself afresh. The school, a bland
Gothic building, now showed as a fortress of learning, whose outworks
were the boarding-houses. Those straggling road