still there was a great
drawback in the presence of Sydney Calcott. Idolized at home,
successful abroad, young Calcott had enough of the prig to be a
perpetual irritation to Jem Frost, all the more because he could never
make Louis resent, nor accept, as other than natural, the goodnatured
supercilious patronage of the steady distinguished senior towards the
idle junior.

Jacobite legends and Stuart relics would have made Miss Conway
oblivious of everything else; but Sydney Calcott must needs divert the
conversation from that channel by saying, 'Ah! there Fitzjocelyn is in
his element. He is a perfect handbook to the byways of history.'

'For the diffusion of useless knowledge?' said Louis.

'Illustrated by the examination, when the only fact you could adduce
about the Argonauts was that Charles V. founded the order of the Golden
Fleece.'

'I beg your pardon; it was his great-grandfather. I had read my
Quentin Durward too well for that.'

'I suspect,' said Isabel, 'that we had all rather be examined in our
Quentin Durward than our Charles V.

'Ah!' said young Calcott, 'I had all my dates at my fingers' ends when
I went up for the modern history prize. Now my sister could beat me.'

'A proof of what I always say,' observed Louis, 'that it is lost labour
to read for an examination.'

'From personal experience?' asked Sydney.

'A Strasburg goose nailed down and crammed before a fire, becomes a
Strasburg pie,' said Louis.

Never did Isabel look more bewildered, and Sydney did not seem at once
to catch the meaning. James added, 'A goose destined to fulfil the
term of existence is not crammed, but the pie stimulus is not required
to prevent it from starving.'

'Is your curious and complimentary culinary fable aimed against reading
or against examinations?' asked Sydney.

'Against neither; only against the connecting preposition.'

'Then you mean to find a superhuman set of students?'

'No; I'm past that. Men and examinations will go on as they are; the
goose will run wild, the requirements will be increased, he will nail
himself down in his despair; and he who crams hardest, and has the
hottest place will gain.'

'Then how is the labour lost?' asked Isabel.

'You are new to Fitzjocelyn's paradoxes,' said Sydney; as if glorying
in having made Louis contradict himself.

'The question is, what is lost labour?' said Louis.

Both Sydney Calcott and Miss Conway looked as if they thought he was
arguing