"It's not half a bad idea," he mused. "I believe, if I let it be known that I didn't want briefs, the solicitors would form up at the early door out of sheer perversity. Everything comes to him who doesn't much care whether it comes or not. You see, as soon as you want anything, you increase the demand and raise the price against yourself; it's a great thing to have studied political economy. If I ever marry it will be some one who's madly in love with me and whom I can just tolerate. If you're fool enough to try it the other way round, you're simply selling yourself into slavery.... As a matter of fact, I'm not lazy at all, but I refuse to fuss about unimportant things. I had all this business out with the guv'nor two years ago; I'd got to do something for a living, and he had all sorts of gold-lace jobs in contemplation—clerk in the House of Lords, agent to my uncle at Penley, private secretary to this man and that. I said it wasn't good enough. If I couldn't go into the army like him, I'd go somewhere where I could make money. We haven't any particular influence in the city, so I chose the bar; and I've every intention of making money there. That's important. But I can't wear myself out looking for digs when I've a kind friend to do it for me. And I never try to do more than one thing at a time. During the next few weeks I shall stay with several very pleasant people. Lady Knightrider's invited me to Raglan as usual; and I'm going to Croxton with the Pentyres; and to House of Steynes with Jim Loring; and to Ireland with George Oakleigh. I wish you'd come, too; I've got such a good country-house manor, I should like you to see it."
"I've got to work."
"So have I—every bit as much as you," Jack answered aggressively. "But I never believe in meeting trouble half-way." His voice became drowsy, and he composed himself for sleep. "Wake me, when we get to Reading."
Such philosophic detachment was a birthright, not to be bought or borrowed; and Eric looked with a mixture of amusement and envy at his slumbering friend. Some time in the autumn the bar term would begin, there would be lectures and examinations, Jack would be called; later he would pay a hundred pounds to an overworked junior for the privilege of sitting in a pupil-room and confusing his head with such papers as he was allowed to see; he would find chambers of his own and choose a circuit and open it. And get together a practice—or fail. In the meantime he slept with the sun shining on his face, trimly brushed and shaved, smiling, rosy and round-cheeked as a plough-boy.
Eric could not so casually leave the future to look after itself; and he was preparing, with a highly-strung man's dread of altercation, for a conflict with his family. Dr. Lane's suggestions were purely scholastic—a fellowship, if possible; failing that, a position on the staff of one of the great public schools. Either would give him security and a chance of earning money at once. There must be other things, of course, but a philologist lived too much out of the world to give practical advice.... Mrs. Lane favoured the Civil Service; but Eric, from the editorial chair of Cap and Bells, had lately made journalism the fabric of his day-dreams. During his last term the editor of the London News came to Oxford as guest of honour at a dinner of the Sherbrooke Club; with eye professionally skinned for rising talent, he had been first amused and then impressed by his young host; there followed a vague proposal of an article, and Eric had been careful to thrust his foot into the yielding doorway of the paper until a month's trial was suggested.
A red-brick wilderness of villas warned him that they were running into Reading. He prodded Jack awake, collected his luggage from the rack and changed into the Basingstoke train. At Winchester a dog-cart, driven by a stiff, military groom, and a pony trap, with an eight-year-old child and her governess, awaited them. The luggage appeared unhurriedly and was separated and stowed out of sight. Jack edged away after a shy greeting to Sybil Lane, and a moment later they were heading through the town for the Melton and Lashmar road.
"Roll round some time and discuss those digs," Eric shouted, as the pony-trap turned from the high-crowned Melton road and jolted into the twilight of unreclaimed woodland whose youngest trees were old and firm-rooted before the New Forest had begun to show the first green of its leaves.
"No, you come to me," Jack called back. "It's shorter for you, because you walk so much faster."
As the low lines of the Mill-House came in sight, Mrs. Lane rose from her chair by the studded front door, closed her book and waved a handkerchief in welcome. For the first time in his life Eric felt that this was no longer his home. Lashmar and Oxford belonged to a youth wherein he was not required to look for a career or to trouble about money and ambition. Within a week he would be occupying chambers of his own and earning his own living.