ive up going. He might as well make
it a penny show."

"It is a show without the penny," said the rector.

"If the poor people did any harm, he would, no doubt, stop their coming,"
said Mrs. Warrender mildly.

"Harm! but of course they do harm. The very idea of thirty working-people,
with their heavy boots, and their dinner in a basket, and smoking, no
doubt!"

"That is bad," said Dick. "Wilberforce and I did nothing of that kind.
We only made explorations in the ruins, and used a little tobacco to
keep off the bad air. The air in the guard-room was close, and Georgie
had a puff at a cigarette, but only with a sanitary view. And our dinner
was in a hamper; there are distinctions. By the way, it was not dinner
at all; it was only lunch."

"And we, I hope, Mr. Cavendish, are very different from----"

"Oh, very different. We have most things we wish to have, and live in
nice houses, and have gardens of our own, and woods to walk in."

"That is quite true," said Minnie; "and we have always been Liberal,--not
against the people, as the Conservatives are; but still it cannot be
good to teach them to be discontented with what they have. We should all
be contented with what we've got. If it had not been the best for us, it
would not have been chosen for us."

"Perhaps we had better not go into the abstract question, Minnie. I
suppose, Mr. Cavendish, you go back to Oxford after the vacation?"

"For hard work," he said, with a laugh. "I am such an old fellow I have
no time to lose. I am not an honour man, like Warrender."

"And you, Theo,--you are going too?" said the rector.

Warrender woke up as out of a dream. "I have not made up my mind.
Perhaps I shall, perhaps not; it is not of much importance."

"Not of much importance! Your first class----"

"I should not take a first class," he said coldly.

"But, my dear fellow!----" The rector's air of puzzled consternation,
and the look he cast round him, as if to ask the world in general for
the reason of this extraordinary self-sacrifice, was so seriously comic
that Dick's gravity was in danger, especially as all the other members
of the party replied to the look with a seriousness, in some cases
disapproval, in some astonishment, which heightened the effect.

"Where does he expect to go to?" he said solemnly.

"Theo thinks," said his mother, "that a first class is not everything in
the world as it is in the University."

"But my dear Mrs. Warrender! that is prec