s of the cell
would allow, turned his back, and endeavoured to read the Thirty-nine
Articles in Leonard's Prayer-Book; but in spite of all his abstraction,
he could not avoid a complete consciousness that the two lads sat on
the bed, clinging with arms round one another like young children, and
that it was Leonard's that was the upright sustaining figure, his own
Aubrey's the prone and leaning one. And of the low whispering murmurs
that reached his would-be deafened ear, the gasping almost sobbing
tones were Aubrey's. The first distinct words that he could not help
hearing were, 'No such thing! There can't be slavery where one works
with a will!' and again, in reply to something unheard, 'Yes, one can!
Why, how did one do one's Greek?'--'Very
different!'--'How?'--'Oh!'--'Yes; but you are a clever chap, and had
her to teach you, but I only liked it because I'd got it to do. Just
the same with the desk-work down at the mill; so it may be the same
now.'

Then came fragments of what poor Aubrey had expressed more than once at
home--that his interest in life, in study, in sport, was all gone with
his friend.

'Come, Aubrey, that's stuff. You'd have had to go to Cambridge, you
know, without me, after I doggedly put myself at that place. There's
just as much for you to do as ever there was.'

'How you keep on with your _do_!' cried Ethel's spoilt child, with a
touch of petulance.

'Why, what are we come here for--into this world, I mean--but to _do_!'
returned Leonard; 'and I take it, if we do it right, it does not much
matter what or where it is.'

'I shan't have any heart for it!' sighed Aubrey.

'Nonsense! Not with all your people at home? and though the voice fell
again, the Doctor's ears distinguished the murmur, 'Why, just the
little things she let drop are the greatest help to me here, and you
always have her--'

Then ensued much that was quite inaudible, and at last Leonard said,
'No, old fellow; as long as you don't get ashamed of me, thinking about
you, and knowing what you are about, will be one of the best pleasures
I shall have. And look here, Aubrey, if we only consider it right, you
and I will be just as really working together, when you are at your
books, and I am making mats, as if we were both at Cambridge side by
side! It is quite true, is it not, Dr. May?' he added, since the
Doctor, finding it time to depart, had turned round to close the
interview.

'Quite true, my boy,' said the Doct