ay.

"My dear, don't you think that's a great pity?" his mother remarked very
mildly, but with a countenance which said much more.

"I don't wish to discuss the question," he said. "I thought I had told
you before. I don't mean to be disagreeable, mother; but don't you think
that in my own case I should know best?"

"Theo!" cried Minnie for the third time, "you are more than disagreeable;
you are ridiculous. How should you know best,--a boy like you? You think
you can do what you like because poor papa is dead, and we are nothing
but women. Oh, it is very ungenerous and undutiful to my mother, but it
is ridiculous too."

"My mother can speak for herself," said the young man. "I don't owe any
explanations to you."

"You will have to give explanations to every one, whether you owe them
or not!" cried Minnie. "I know what people think and what they say.
There is always supposed to be some reason for it when a young man
doesn't go back to his college. They think he has got into disgrace;
they think it is some bad scrape. We shall have to make up excuses and
explanations."

"They may think what they please, so far as I am concerned," he replied.

"But, my dear, she is right, though that does not matter very much," said
Mrs. Warrender. "There will be a great many inquiries; and explanations
will have to be given. That is not the most important, Theo. Didn't you
tell me that if you lost this term you could not go in, as you call it,
for honours? I thought you had told me so."

"Honours!" he said contemptuously. "What do honours mean? I found out
the folly of that years ago. They are a sort of trade-mark, very good
for business purposes. Brunson has sense on his side when he goes in
for honours. They are good for the college to keep up its reputation as
a teaching machine; and they are good for a schoolmaster in the same
way. But what advantage would all the honours of the University be to
me?" he added, with a laugh of scorn. "There's an agricultural college
somewhere. There would be some meaning in it if I took honours there."

"You have a strange idea of your own position, Theo," said Mrs.
Warrender, roused to indignation. "You are not a farmer, but a country
gentleman."

"Of the very smallest," he said,--"a little squire. If I were a good
farmer and knew my trade, I should be more good."

"A country gentleman," cried Minnie, who had kept silence with difficulty,
and seized the first opportunity to break in, "is