“Well?”
“You know how I always looked forward to settling in London, and how Uncle Cheriton wished it, and meant to help me on. In fact I never thought of anything else.”
“Yes, I know,” said Jack, briefly.
“There was a time when I desired that sort of success intensely, and when things were very much changed for me, I thought it would still—be satisfactory.”
“Yes?”
“But of course, as you know, I soon perceived that the hard continuous work, necessary for anything like success, was quite out of the question for me—I feel sure that it always will be; and, moreover, I never felt well in London. I was much better here when I first came back.”
Poor Jack looked as if the disappointment were much fresher and harder to him than to the speaker himself.
“You must know,” Cheriton continued, “that a doctor once told me at Oxford that the damp soft air there was very bad for a native of such a place as this, and I see now that the last few months there began the mischief; and London has something the same effect on me. That seems to settle the question.”
“I suppose so,” said Jack, so disconsolately, that Cherry half smiled, as he resumed,—
“Otherwise the pleasant idle life there might have its charms. Though, after all, Jack, I shouldn’t like it as things are now. When I expected to be a London man, I expected, as you know—a good deal else. And afterwards even, while all home ties here were safe and sound, one would not get selfish and aimless. But now I couldn’t be happy, I think, without a home-world that really belonged to me.”