“Surely they weren’t hard on you.” Kitty’s social position was several steps down from that of Colin’s people, but behind her words lurked the suspicion, not based entirely on fancy, that the Haywards might have been very hard indeed on the youngest son and brother.
“Oh, I daresay I deserved the dressing-down I got,” he returned. “You see my parents, brothers, and sisters take my failure as a sort of public affront. My brothers have been brilliant, and because two of them became a minister and a lawyer without any apparent trouble, my father can’t see why I have not become a doctor with equal ease and speed.”
“But you never wanted to be a doctor.”
“That is not the point, Kitty. I was expected to become one. Well, I’ve struggled through four professionals, but Providence—I’ve no doubt about its being Providence—says I’ve gone far enough for humanity’s sake.”
“Do you mean that you are not going to try again?” she asked after a moment.
“Exactly! And that has added to the trouble at home. I’m twenty-five, and I told them that I could not go on wasting more years at a thing I was plainly not adapted for. They insisted that I should go on, and I respectfully but firmly refused.” He paused.
“Well, Colin?”—anxiously.
“I don’t want you to imagine,” he said slowly, “that I’m thinking any evil of my people. I understand their feelings, their pride, and so on, well enough; but they don’t understand me one little bit. Well, I’m going to look for something to do that doesn’t require a university brain. To begin with, I’m going to London—”
“London! Oh!”
“Still hankering, Kitty?” he gently inquired.