. "Does Uncle Robert
know?"

"Yes; I wrote to father this morning, and I'm going down to Ashbridge
to-morrow. I shall be very sorry if he disapproves."

"Then you'll be sorry," said Francis.

"I know, but it won't make any difference to my action. After all, I'm
twenty-five; if I can't begin to manage my life now, you may be sure I
never shall. But I know I'm right. I would bet on my infallibility. At
present I've only told you half my reasons for resigning, and already
you agree with me."

Francis did not contradict this.

"Let's hear the rest, then," he said.

"You shall. The rest is far more important, and rather resembles a
sermon."

Francis appropriately sat down again.

"Well, it's this," said Michael. "I'm twenty-five, and it is time that
I began trying to be what perhaps I may be able to be, instead of not
trying very much--because it's hopeless--to be what I can't be. I'm
going to study music. I believe that I could perhaps do something there,
and in any case I love it more than anything else. And if you love a
thing, you have certainly a better chance of succeeding in it than in
something that you don't love at all. I was stuck into the army for no
reason except that soldiering is among the few employments which it is
considered proper for fellows in my position--good Lord! how awful it
sounds!--proper for me to adopt. The other things that were open were
that I should be a sailor or a member of Parliament. But the soldier was
what father chose. I looked round the picture gallery at home the other
day; there are twelve Lord Ashbridges in uniform. So, as I shall be
Lord Ashbridge when father dies, I was stuck into uniform too, to be the
ill-starred thirteenth. But what has it all come to? If you think of it,
when did the majority of them wear their smart uniforms? Chiefly when
they went on peaceful parades or to court balls, or to the Sir Joshua
Reynolds of the period to be painted. They've been tin soldiers,
Francis! You're a tin soldier, and I've just ceased to be a tin soldier.
If there was the smallest chance of being useful in the army, by which
I mean standing up and being shot at because I am English, I would not
dream of throwing it up. But there's no such chance."

Michael paused a moment in his sermon, and beat out the ashes from his
pipe against the grate.

"Anyhow the chance is too remote," he said. "All the nations with armies
and navies are too much afraid of each other to do more tha