s were not absent; their brows were
not furrowed; their minds seemed quite at home in exchanging nothings.
Interest many of them had in the approaching struggle, but it was
much such an interest as betters of small sums may have on the Derby
day,--just enough to give piquancy to the race; nothing to make gain a
great joy, or loss a keen anguish.

"Our host is looking ill," said Mivers, accosting Kenelm. "I detect
symptoms of suppressed gout. You know my aphorism, 'nothing so gouty as
ambition,' especially Parliamentary ambition."

"You are not one of those friends who press on my choice of life that
source of disease; allow me to thank you."

"Your thanks are misplaced. I strongly advise you to devote yourself to
a political career."

"Despite the gout?"

"Despite the gout. If you could take the world as I do, my advice might
be different. But your mind is overcrowded with doubts and fantasies and
crotchets, and you have no choice but to give them vent in active life."

"You had something to do in making me what I am,--an idler; something
to answer for as to my doubts, fantasies, and crotchets. It was by your
recommendation that I was placed under the tuition of Mr. Welby, and at
that critical age in which the bent of the twig forms the shape of the
tree."

"And I pride myself on that counsel. I repeat the reasons for which I
gave it: it is an incalculable advantage for a young man to start in
life thoroughly initiated into the New Ideas which will more or less
influence his generation. Welby was the ablest representative of these
ideas. It is a wondrous good fortune when the propagandist of the
New Ideas is something more than a bookish philosopher,--when he is
a thorough 'man of the world,' and is what we emphatically call
'practical.' Yes, you owe me much that I secured to you such tuition,
and saved you from twaddle and sentiment, the poetry of Wordsworth and
the muscular Christianity of Cousin John."

"What you say that you saved me from might have done me more good than
all you conferred on me. I suspect that when education succeeds
in placing an old head upon young shoulders the combination is not
healthful: it clogs the blood and slackens the pulse. However, I must
not be ungrateful; you meant kindly. Yes, I suppose Welby is practical:
he has no belief, and he has got a place. But our host, I presume, is
also practical; his place is a much higher one than Welby's, and yet he
is surely not without belie