tutor and less and less of his unfinished dream, and he realised
painfully that the vicar was nearly the only friend he had in the world.
He would of course find Cornelius Angleside at Cambridge, but he
suspected that Cornelius, turned loose among a merry band of
undergraduates of his own position would be a very different person from
the idle youth he had known at Billingsfield, trembling in the intervals
of his idleness at the awful prospect of the entrance examination, and
frantically attempting to master some bit of stray knowledge which might
possibly be useful to him. Cornelius would hunt, would gamble, would go
to the races and would give wines at college; John was to be a reading
man who must avoid such things as he would avoid the devil himself, not
only because he was too wretchedly poor to have any share whatever in the
amusements of Cornelius and his set, but because every minute was
important, every hour meant not only learning but meant, most
emphatically, money. He thought of his poor father, grinding out the life
of a literary hack in a wretched London lodging, dining Heaven knew where
and generally supping not at all, saving every penny to help his son's
education, hard working, honest, lacking no virtue except the virtue of
all virtues--success. Then he thought how he himself had been favoured by
fortune during these last years, living under the vicar's roof, treated
with the same consideration as the high-born young gentlemen who had been
his companions, living well, sleeping well and getting the best education
in England for nothing or next to nothing, while that same father of his
had never ceased to slave day and night with his pen, honestly doing his
best and yet enjoying none of the good things of life. John thought of
all this and set his teeth boldly to face the world. A few months, he
thought, and he might have earned a scholarship--he might be independent.
Then a little longer--less than three years--and he might, nay, he would,
take high honours in the university and come back crowned with glory,
with the prospect of a fellowship, with every profession open to him,