?"

"Oh I don't see much difficulty in that," said his host, smiling;
"get up your lectures well, to begin with."

"But my lectures are a farce," said Tom; "I've done all the books
over and over again. They don't take me an hour a day to get up."

"Well, then, set to work reading something regularly--reading for
your degree, for instance."

"Oh, hang it! I can't look so far forward as that; I shan't be
going up for three years."

"You can't begin too early. You might go and talk to your
college-tutor about it."

"So I did," said Tom; "at least I meant to do it. For he asked me
and two other freshmen to breakfast the other morning, and I was
going to open out to him; but when I got there I was quite shut
up. He never looked one of us in the face, and talked in set
sentences, and was cold, and formal, and condescending. The only
bit of advice he gave us was to have nothing to do with
boating--just the one thing which I feel a real interest in. I
couldn't get out a word of what I wanted to say."

"It is unlucky, certainly, that our present tutors take so little
interest in anything which the men care about. But it is more
from shyness than anything else, that manner which you noticed.
You may be sure that he was more wretched and embarrassed than
any of you."

"Well, but now I should really like to know what you did
yourself," said Tom; "you are the only man of much older standing
than myself whom I know at all yet--I mean I don't know anybody
else well enough to talk about this sort of thing to them. What
did you do, now, besides learning to pull, in your first year?"

"I had learnt to pull before I came up here," said Hardy.

"I really hardly remember what I did besides read. You see, I
came up with a definite purpose of reading. My father was very
anxious that I should become a good scholar. Then my position in
the college and my poverty naturally kept me out of the many
things which other men do."

Tom flushed again at the ugly word, but not so much as at first.
Hardy couldn't mind the subject, or he would never be forcing it
up at every turn, he thought.

"You wouldn't think it," he began again, harping on the same
string, "but I can hardly tell you how I miss the sort of
responsibility I was talking to you about. I have no doubt I
shall get the vacuum filled up before long, but for the life of
me I can't see how yet."

"You will be a very lucky fellow if you don't find it quite as
much as you can