ntil he told him to shut up, and that ended the whole
thing, for Dennison knew when it was wise to be silent. I did not
think much of Jack's resolutions, for he had been doing no work for
such a long time and with such perfect success, that a complete change
was more than I was able to grasp. Every one in St. Cuthbert's was
supposed to read for honours in some school or other, and Jack, having
scrambled through pass "Mods," had for a year pretended to read law. I
never saw him doing it, but he had a most effective way of fooling
dons, and, as far as his work was concerned, he never seemed to be
worried. When, however, he came to me three weeks before the end of
the term, and told me he was going to give up law and read history, I
thought he was seeking trouble.

"You will have to work if you have anything to do with The Bradder," I
told him.

"For the last ten minutes I have been trying to make you understand
that I want to work," he answered, but still I did not believe him.

"All your law will be wasted," I said.

"I don't know any, so that's all right."

"But the dons won't let you change."

"I can manage them; the history people won't want me, but the law
people will be glad to get rid of me, I have sounded them already."

"You will end by reading theology," I said.

He gave a great laugh and said he didn't know where he should end, and
that all he wanted to do was to work. But he spoke of working as if it
was a new sort of game, and I thought his desire to try it would vanish
as quickly as it had come, so I was surprised when he tackled The
Bradder, and persuaded him that history was the only subject in which
he could ever take a decent class. Without the consent of anybody, he
stopped going to the lectures to which he was supposed to go, and came
to my rooms at all hours of the day to borrow books and read them.
Apparently he had become a kind of free-lance, having shaken off his
old tutors and not having got any new ones, but he read through a short
history of England three times in a week because he said he wanted a
good solid ground-work to build upon. Perhaps The Bradder asked that
he might be left alone, for certainly no one bothered him and he
bothered nobody with the exception of me. I admit that I found him a
very great nuisance, for I had been compelled to read during the last
two terms, and I had not been smitten with any enthusiasm for an
examination which was in the far distance. In f