“What, that donkey, Evelyn, having cut you? I should not trouble myself much on that score, though I did think better of him at Eton.”
“He hasn’t cut me,” Jock made sharp return.
“One pasteboard among all the family,” grunted the Friar. “I reserve to myself the satisfaction of cutting him dead the next opportunity,” he added magniloquently.
Jock laughed, as he was of course intended to do, but there was such a painful ring in the laugh that John paused and said—
“That’s not all, old fellow! Come, make a clean breast of it, my fair son. Thou dost weary of thy vocation.”
“No such thing,” exclaimed Jock, with an inaudible growl between his teeth. “Trust Kencroft for boring on!” and aloud, with some impatience, “It is just what I would have chosen for its own sake.”
“Then,” said John, still keeping up the grand philosophical air and demeanour, though with real kindness and desire to show sympathy, “thou art either entangled by worldly scruples, leading thee to disdain the wholesome art of healing, or thou art, like thy brother, the victim of the fickle sex.”
“Shut up!” said Jock, pushed beyond endurance; “can’t you understand that some things can’t be talked of?”
“Whew!” John whistled, and surveyed him rather curiously from head to foot. “It is another case of deluded souls not knowing what an escape they’ve had. What! she thought you a catch in the old days.”
“That’s all you know about it!” said Jock. “She is not that sort. The poverty is nothing, but there’s a fitness in things. Women, the best of them, think much of what I suppose you call the row. It fits in with all their chivalry and romance.”