head upon his
shoulder.

"I wish you'd persuade Uncle William to let me leave Tercanbury. I'm so
sick of it."

But the Vicar of Blackstable did not easily alter any arrangements he had
made, and it had always been intended that Philip should stay at King's
School till he was eighteen, and should then go to Oxford. At all events
he would not hear of Philip leaving then, for no notice had been given and
the term's fee would have to be paid in any case.

"Then will you give notice for me to leave at Christmas?" said Philip, at
the end of a long and often bitter conversation.

"I'll write to Mr. Perkins about it and see what he says."

"Oh, I wish to goodness I were twenty-one. It is awful to be at somebody
else's beck and call."

"Philip, you shouldn't speak to your uncle like that," said Mrs. Carey
gently.

"But don't you see that Perkins will want me to stay? He gets so much a
head for every chap in the school."

"Why don't you want to go to Oxford?"

"What's the good if I'm not going into the Church?"

"You can't go into the Church: you're in the Church already," said the
Vicar.

"Ordained then," replied Philip impatiently.

"What are you going to be, Philip?" asked Mrs. Carey.

"I don't know. I've not made up my mind. But whatever I am, it'll be
useful to know foreign languages. I shall get far more out of a year in
Germany than by staying on at that hole."

He would not say that he felt Oxford would be little better than a
continuation of his life at school. He wished immensely to be his own
master. Besides he would be known to a certain extent among old
schoolfellows, and he wanted to get away from them all. He felt that his
life at school had been a failure. He wanted to start fresh.

It happened that his desire to go to Germany fell in with certain ideas
which had been of late discussed at Blackstable. Sometimes friends came to
stay with the doctor and brought news of the world outside; and the
visitors spending August by the sea had their own way of looking at
things. The Vicar had heard that there were people who did not think the
old-fashioned education so useful nowadays as it had been in the past, and
modern languages were gaining an importance which they had not had in his
own youth. His own mind was divided, for a younger brother of his had been
sent to Germany when he failed in some examination, thus creating a
precedent but since he had there died of typhoid it was impossible to look
u