“Honoria—”
“But there is one thing you haven’t told, and you shall now, if you care to—about your examination and what you did at Oxford.”
So he sat down beside her on a sand-hill and told her: about the long low-ceiled room in the quadrangle of the Bodleian, the old marbles which lined the walls, the examiner at the blue baize table, and the little deal tables (all scribbled over with names and dates and verses and ribald remarks) at which the candidates wrote; also of the viva voce examination in the antechamber of the Convocation House, He told it all as if it were the great event he honestly felt it to be.
“And the others,” said she, “those who were writing around you, and the examiner—how did you feel towards them?”
Taffy stared at her. “I don’t know that I thought much about them.”
“Didn’t you feel as if it was a battle and you wanted to beat them all?”
He broke out laughing. “Why, the examiner was an old man, as dry as a stick! And I hardly remember what the others were like—except one, a white-headed boy with a pimply face. I couldn’t help noticing him, because whenever I looked up there he was at the next table, staring at me and chewing a quill.”
“I can’t understand,” she confessed. “Often and often I have tried to think myself a man—a man with ambition. And to me that has always meant fighting. I see myself a man, and the people between me and the prize have all to be knocked down or pushed out of the way. But you don’t even see them—all you see is a pimply-faced boy sucking a quill. Taffy—”
“Yes?”
“I wish you would write to me when you get to Oxford. Write regularly. Tell me all you do.”