seem as if he had had some pre-vision of his son's genius: how
else explain the fact that he had said he would like to have a son
a sculptor three months before the child was born?

Rodney said he would like to go to the School of Art, and his
father kept him there for two years, though he sorely wanted him
to help in the business. There was no sacrifice that the elder
Rodney would not have made for his son. But Rodney knew that he
could not always count upon his father's help, and one day he
realised quite clearly that the only way for him to become a
sculptor was by winning scholarships. There were two waiting to be
won by him, and he felt that he would have no difficulty in
winning them. That year there was a scholarship for twenty-five
pounds, and there was another scholarship that he might win in the
following year, and he thought of nothing else but these
scholarships until he had won them; then he started for Paris with
fifty pounds in his pocket, and a resolve in his heart that he
would live for a year and pay his fees out of this sum of money.
Those were hard days, but they were likewise great days. He had
been talking to Harding about those days in Paris the night before
last, and he had told him of the room at the top of the house for
which he paid thirty francs a month. There was a policeman on one
side and there was a footman on the other. It was a bare little
room, and he lived principally on bread. In those days his only
regret was that he had not the necessary threepence to go to the
cafe. "One can't go to the cafe without threepence to pay for the
harmless bock, and if one has threepence one can sit in the cafe
discussing Carpeaux, Rodin, and the mysteries, until two in the
morning, when one is at last ejected by an exhausted proprietor at
the head of numerous waiters."