"Then you'll have to wait."
And he said:
"It's done one thing; it's quite decided me about my future. I'm going to be a clergyman."
And I said:
"Not if your voice doesn't crack, surely?"
"My voice!" answered Percy minimus with great scorn. "What is a voice compared to a miracle? If miracles happen to you, then, if you've got any proper feeling, you ought to insist on being a clergyman."
So I suppose he will be. But whatever else he is--even if he rises to be a Canon or a Bishop--he'll always be a maniac, the same as his brothers.
THE PRIZE POEM
Things were beastly dull at Merivale when we went back after the Christmas holidays, and I believe even the Doctor felt it. Of course, from our point of view, his life must always be deadly, but I suppose he gets a certain amount of feeble excitement into it, in ways not known to us. It's rather interesting to wonder what old people do find worth doing; yet they must do something to amuse themselves, off and on, or they'd go mad, I should think, which they seldom do. The amusements of a very old person must be rather weird, yet they clearly like to be alive, for when my grandmother died, she was eighty--a time of life when you'd think there was simply nothing left. Yet, when I went to say farewell to her, she told me she hoped to see the spring flowers once more. She didn't; but it shows how fearfully hard-up old people must be for amusement of any kind; for who on earth would want to see flowers, spring or otherwise, if practically everything else had not been lost to them? Myself I would much rather have died years before than eat the food my grandmother ate, and never go out except in a bath-chair; but she found it good enough, strange to say. So, no doubt, Dr. Dunston, who is entirely active, and can eat meat and drink wine and walk rapidly about, still finds being Head of Merivale School all right.
But the winter term was deadly, what with the bad weather and the slow progress of the War, and losing most of our football matches, owing to having a very weak team.