"And what was that?" said the Warden, with a faint smile. "I believe I have given you a great deal of good advice."
"It was—to go down," said John; and he felt a little attack of the wounded vanity which that advice had roused in him as he repeated the words, notwithstanding that he was making them his own.
"Oh," said the Warden, with a little surprise, "was that my advice?—and why was it my advice?"
"It was chiefly, I think, because this miserable essay, which you think disgraceful, and so do I, had not been written—the writing of it has convinced me of the justice of what you said."
"But not me," said the Warden; "the essay is not very good, certainly" (he had tacitly allowed it to be "rot," in its author's forcible language, two minutes before); "still it is a piece of work creditably gone through with, though against the grain. That does not count in literature, perhaps, but it does in morals."
"I don't think so," said the audacious John: few were the men who had dared to say so to the Warden before. "Bad work is bad work, sir, if it were done with the best motive in the world."
The great man's face wavered a little between wrath and approval. There was a spark of humour in him. "Thank you," he said, "for the lesson"—while John's countenance blazed like fire.
"Oh, sir, I hope you don't think——"
"You need not apologise. I thought a week or two ago you had better go down. I don't think so now. I need not stand upon my consistency. You had better work out the problem for yourself."
John stood before him doubtfully, shaking his head. "The tides outside are very strong," he said; "they catch a man's feet——"