“Why did you care nothing about what you did at Cambridge, then?” she asked. “Surely you could have made a beginning there.”
“I got a third in my Tripos,” remarked Tom. “Have you ever done Greek grammar, or Thucydides?”
“No, never; why?”
“It’s the sort of thing a parrot could be taught to do.”
“And because you are not a parrot, they couldn’t teach you. Is that it?”
Tom laughed.
“Well, you needn’t believe it unless you like, but I believe I could have done well if I had wanted to enough. I really didn’t want to. There’s not time for that sort of thing.”
“What did you do instead?”
“I enjoyed myself. I’ve had my holiday, and now I’m going to work. Here’s your brother coming to look for you.”
Arthur Wrexham was a slight, delicate-looking man, who apparently suffered from extreme languor; he was very well dressed, and had weak blue eyes, which looked only a quarter awake. He had already roused Tom’s wrath by confessing, in answer to certain questions, that he had never been into any of the museums.