When I missed the English verse-prize last year (you remember, Bessie?)
I had made so sure of it that I could hardly show my face at home.
Mother was disappointed, but you just snuggled up to me and said, 'Never
mind, Harry, I love you;' and you did not care whether I had a prize or
none. And that was comfort. I made up my mind at that minute what I
should do."

"Dear old Harry! I am sure your verses were the best, far away," was
Bessie's response; and then she begged to hear more of what her comrade
meant to do.

Harry did not want much entreating. His schemes could hardly be called
castles in the air, so much of the solid and reasonable was there in the
design of them. He had no expectation of success by wishing, and no
trust in strokes of luck. Life is a race, and a harder race than ever.
Nobody achieves great things without great labors and often great
sacrifices. "The labor I shall not mind; the sacrifices I shall make
pay." Harry was getting out of Bessie's depth now; a little more of
poetry and romance in his views would have brought them nearer to the
level of her comprehension. Then he talked to her of his school, of the
old doctor, that great man, of his schoolfellows, of his rivals whom he
had distanced--not a depreciatory word of any of them. "I don't believe
in luck for myself," he said. "But there is a sort of better and worse
fortune amongst men, independent of merit. It was the narrowest shave
between me and Fordyce. I would not have given sixpence for my chance of
the scholarship against his, yet I won it. He is a good fellow, Fordyce:
he came up and shook hands as if he had won. That was just what I
wanted: I felt so happy! Now I shall go to Oxford; in a year or two I
shall have pupils, and who knows but I may gain a fellowship? I shall
take you to Oxford, Bessie, when the time comes."