"I've told you once."
"Yes, I know. But did you mean it? People change so."
"I told you you could leave school when you're sixteen if you pass the London Matric."
"But what good's the London Matric to an architect? Mr. Orgreave says it isn't any good, anyway."
"When did he tell you that?"
"Yesterday."
"But not so long since you were all for being a stock-breeder!"
"Ah! I was only pretending to myself!" George smiled.
"Well, fetch me my cigarettes off the mantelpiece in the drawing-room."
The boy ran off, eager to serve, and Edwin's glance followed him with affection. George's desire to be an architect had consistently strengthened, save during a brief period when the Show of the North Staffordshire Agricultural Society, held with much splendour at Hanbridge, had put another idea into his noddle--an idea that fed itself richly on glorious bulls and other prize cattle for about a week, and then expired. Indeed, already it had been in a kind of way arranged that the youth should ultimately be articled to Johnnie Orgreave. Among many consequences of Johnnie's defiance to society would probably be the quashing of that arrangement. And there was Johnnie, on the eve of his elopement, chatting to George about the futility of the London Matriculation! Edwin wondered how George would gradually learn what had happened to his friend and inspirer, John Orgreave.