Concerning Willie and the others there was a favorable account. Of all Bessie's old friends and acquaintances not one was lost, not one had gone away. But talk of them was only preliminary to more interesting talk of themselves, modestly deferred, but well lingered over once it was begun. Harry Musgrave could not tell Bessie too much—he could not explain with too exact a precision the system of college-life, its delights and drawbacks. He had been very successful; he had won many prizes, and anticipated the distinction of a high degree—all at the cost of work. One term he had not gone up to Oxford. The doctor had ordered him to rest.
"Still, you are not quite killed with study," said Bessie gayly, rallying him. She thought the school-life of girls was as laborious as the college-life of young men, with much fewer alleviations.
"That was never my way. I can make a spurt if need be. But it is safer to keep a steady, even pace."
"And what are you going to do for a profession, Harry? Have you made up your mind yet?"
Harry had made up his mind to win a fellowship at Oxford, and then to enter himself at one of the Inns of Court and read for the bar. For physic and divinity he had no taste, but the law would suit him. Bessie was ineffably depressed by this information: what romance is there in the law for the imagination of eighteen? If Harry had said he was going to throw himself on the world as a poor author, she would have bestowed upon him a fund of interest and sympathy. To win a little of such encouragement Harry added that while waiting for briefs he might be forced to betake himself to the cultivation of light literature, of journalism, or even of parliamentary reporting: many men, now of mark, had done so. Then Bessie was better satisfied. "But oh what a prodigious wig you will want!" was her rueful conclusion.
"Have I such a Goliath head?" Harry inquired, rubbing his large hands through his crisp, abundant locks. They were as much all in a fuzz as ever, but his skin was not so gloriously tanned, and his hands were white instead of umber. Bessie noticed them: they were whiter and more delicate than her own.
Harry Musgrave had no conceit, but plenty of confidence, and he knew that his head was a very good head. It had room for plenty of brains, and Harry was of opinion that it is far more desirable to be born with a fortune in brains than with the proverbial silver spoon in one's mouth. He would have laughed to scorn the vulgar notion that to be born in the purple or in a wilderness of money-bags is more than an equivalent, and would have bid you see the little value God sets on riches by observing the people to whom He gives them. Birth, he would have granted, ensures a man a long step at starting, but unless he have brains his rival without ancestors will pass him in the race for distinction. This was young Musgrave's creed at three-and-twenty. He expounded it to Bessie, who heard him with a puzzled perception of something left out. Harry, like many another man at the beginning of life, reckoned without the unforeseen.
The sum of Bessie's experiences, adventures, opinions was not long. Her mind had not matured at school as it would have done in the practical education of home. She had acquired a graceful carriage and propriety of behavior, and she had learned a little more history, with a few dates and other things that are written in books; but of current literature and current events, great or small, she had learned nothing. For seclusion a French school is like a convent. She had a sense of humor and a sense of justice—qualities not too common in the sex; and she had a few liberal notions, the seed of which had been sown during her rides with the doctor. They would probably outlive her memory for the shadowy regions of chronology. Then she had a clear and strong sentiment with regard to the oppressive manner in which her grandfather had exercised his right and power over her, which gave a tincture to her social views not the most amiable. She was confessedly happier with Madame Fournier at Bayeux than she had any anticipation of being at Abbotsmead, but she had nevertheless a feeling of injury in being kept in a state of pupilage. She had wrought up her mind to expect a recall to England when she was eighteen, and no recall had come. Harry Musgrave's inquiry when she was to leave school brought a blush to her face. She was ashamed to answer that she did not know.
"Lady Latimer should interfere for you," suggested Harry, who had not received a lively impression of her lot.
Bessie's countenance cleared with a flash, and her thoughts were instantly diverted to Fairfield and its gracious mistress—that bright particular star of her childish imagination: "Oh, Harry, have you made friends with Lady Latimer?" asked she.