So Professor Smallman was the boy his father remembered! René gained confidence. It was something to know that his experience was not singular.
“They did help until my father came back. They won’t now, and I don’t want them to. They don’t understand the pain of receiving charity uncharitably given. They call it ingratitude.”
“They have their point of view.”
“So have I mine,” said René, astonished at his own boldness.
“Your work’s good,” said the Professor. “Tweeddale’s reports of you were always excellent. As you know, I don’t come in touch with men until their third year, and then only if they’re good. You can take that from me. I must tell you—it wouldn’t be fair not to—that one doesn’t know in the least how good you are going to be. One has an uncertainty about you. In a way, that’s all to the good. I like what you’ve written for the Post. So does Pigott the editor. What about journalism? Do you write easily?”
“No.”
“It rather scotches that, then. Pupils? You could make a little that way, but it’s drudging work when you’re reading as well. I could give you two first-year men, pretty bad, both of them, and Miss Brock, the girl you met at lunch, has a young brother who can’t get through the matric. That’s as much as you could manage.”
René had no notion how much he ought to be paid. He asked, and when he heard the amount his heart overflowed with gratitude, and he walked home with a new vigor in his stride and a prouder carriage of his head. His father and mother were out. His news would not keep, and he went round to George, first changing his brown boots for black. He reckoned that in three terms he would be able to make nearly as much as his brother’s whole income, and would have the vacations to repair any damage done to his own work. Then he would take his degree, and the whole world, all life, would open up before him.