rhaps I shall get back to Oxford after all."

I knew nothing about the Stock Exchange, but I sympathized very much
with any one who had to live in the same house with a fuming bull.
Even Fred agreed with me that Jack was being treated unfairly, and he
never spoke about him at all if he could help it. When Jack and he had
met during the last year at Oxford, as they had often, they were so
astonishingly polite to each other that had I not known the reason I
should have been very amused, but as it was, I thought they were making
a great fuss about something quite unimportant.

To pretend not to notice a thing which is as clear as daylight is not a
part which I can play with any comfort, so Jack and Fred fidgeted me
terribly, but they had got some idea firmly fixed in their heads, with
which I was wise enough not to meddle. They were both such friends of
mine that I hoped they would see as quickly as possible that there was
something very humorous in the way they treated each other.

Owen took a first in his final schools, and as soon as the list was out
he wrote to me and said that he hoped to come up for a fifth year to
read for a first in History. This, I thought, was tempting Providence,
for he had already got two firsts, and he seemed to me to be collecting
them as I had once collected birds' eggs. He decided, however, to give
up his plan, and accepted a mastership at a school in Scotland. I must
say that I was relieved at this, for I intended to take two more years
before my examinations, and if he had got a first in one year I am sure
that I should have heard a very great deal about him, when my father
felt unwell or wished to make me feel uncomfortable.

I spent most of my second summer vac in France, partly because my
mother was not well, and also because an old scheme for improving my
French had been revived. When Fred and I had gone to Oxford there had
been some idea of us trying for the Indian Civil Service, but for
various reasons this was abandoned, and although Fred had determined
that he would go back to Cliborough as a master if he could manage it,
I had drifted through two years without having made up my mind what was
to happen to me when I got my degree. The Bishop wanted me to be a
clergyman, my mother thought that if Fred was going to be a
school-master there was no reason why I should not be one, and although
my father did not say anything he was not the man to see me finish my
time at Oxford