"Nor can he manage it in that sense. His father has too large a family to help him, and there's no chance of the exhibition. It is promised, Keating has announced. The exhibitions in Helstonleigh College don't go by right."
"Right or merit, do you mean, Frank?"
"I suppose I mean merit; but the one implies the other. They go by neither."
"Or you think that Frank Halliburton would have had it?"
"At any rate, he has not got it. Neither has Wall. Therefore, we have made up our minds, he and I, to go to Oxford as servitors."
"All right! Success to you both!"
Frank fell into a reverie. The friend of whom he spoke, Wall, was nephew of the under-master of the college school. "Of course I never expected to get to college in any other way," continued Frank, taking up the tongs and balancing them on his fingers. "If an exhibition did at odd moments cross my hopes, I would not dwell upon it. There are fellows in the school richer and greater than I. However, the exhibition is gone, and there's an end of it. The question now is—if I do go as a servitor, can my mother find the little additional expense necessary to keep me there?"
"Yes, I am sure she can: and will," replied William.
"There'll be the expenses of travelling, and sundry other little things," went on Frank. "Wall says it will cost each of us about fifteen pounds a year. We have dinner and supper free. Of course, I should never think of tea, and for breakfast I would take milk and plain bread. There'd be living at home between terms—unless I found something to do—and my clothes."
"It can be managed. Frank, you'll drop those tongs."