on after a defeat. 'Calcott is teaching her his own
obtuseness!' thought James, in a pet; and he exclaimed, 'Is the aim to
make men or winners of prizes?'

'The aim of prizes is commonly supposed to be to make men,' loftily
observed Sydney.

'Exactly so; and, therefore, I would not make them too analogous to the
Strasburg system,' said Louis. 'I would have them close, searching,
but not admitting of immediate cramming.'

'Pray how would you bring that about?'

'By having no subject on which superficial knowledge could make a show.'

'Oh! I see whither you are working round! That won't do now, my dear
fellow; we must enlarge our field, or we shall lay ourselves open to
the charge of being narrow-minded.'

'You have not strength of mind to be narrow-minded!' said Louis,
shaking his head. 'Ah! well, I have no more to say; my trust is in the
narrow mind, the only expansive one--'

He was at that moment called away; Lord Ormersfield's carriage had been
announced, and his son was not in a quarter of the room where he wished
to detain him. James could willingly have bitten Sydney Calcott for
the observation, 'Poor Fitzjocelyn! he came out strong to-night.'

'Very clever,' said Isabel, wishing to gratify James.

'Oh yes, very; if he had ever taken pains,' said Sydney. 'There is
often something in his paradoxes. After all, I believe he is reading
hard for his degree, is he not, Jem? His feelings would not be hurt by
the question, for he never piqued himself upon his consistency.'

Luckily for the general peace, the Calcott household was on the move,
and Jem solaced himself on their departure by exclaiming, 'Well done,
Strasburg system! A high-power Greek-imbibing machine, he may be, but
as to comprehending Fitzjocelyn--'

'Nay,' said Isabel, 'I think Lord Fitzjocelyn ought to carry about a
pocket expositor, if he will be so very startling. He did not stay to
tell us what to understand by narrow minds.'

'Did you ever hear of any one good for anything, that was not accused
of a narrow mind?' exclaimed James.

'If that were what he meant,' said Isabel,--'but he said his trust was
in the narrow mind--'

'In what is popularly so called,' said James.

'I think,' said Mary, leaning forward, and speaking low, 'that he did
not mean it to be explained away. I think he was going to say that the
heart may be wide, but the mind must be so far narrow, that it will
accept only the one right, not the many wrong.'