"I've had a good time here," he said. "If I weren't convinced that regret is a weed, which flourishes with the smallest encouragement, and chokes many and better things, I'd regret that it's over. Like Father Thames I've been mightily pleased to lap the stones of Oxford, and give no thought to the changes lower down, or the ultimate submergence in the salt sea." "You're heir to a considerable patrimony, aren't you, Fleming?" "I do not care about money," he replied without affectation. "Lucky dog! that's a pinnacle of virtue to which I have never attained. Still money is an asset worth considering." "My father has saved, I believe; how much, I don't know--he's given me all I ever asked for without stint. I can surely give him a year of my life in return and not grumble. Still, of course, India attracted me. But it would have broken his heart, his and my mother's, if I'd gone." "Your folk wanted you to enter the Church, didn't they?--dedicated you, like Samuel, to the Lord, before you were born!" "Yes." Peter did not enlighten his friend further. He was not able to think without pain of his parents' grief, when he had told them that he could not fulfil their wishes. At first the miller had been very angry, had grudged the money he had spent on his son's education, had called it wasted, and said Peter was ungrateful, unfilial, and a fool. Then he had ended by imploring him, with tears, to think seriously before blighting his hopes. Peter's mother had kept silence, that was more distressing than his father's passion. When they found him obdurate, though greatly troubled because of their disappointment, they begged him to come home for a year, think it over, and see, if by reflection, he could not come to a happier decision. He had consented to their wishes, on condition that he should not be idle, but have the post of school-master, which the old pedagogue, who had held it for a lifetime, was now too old to fulfil any longer. This was easily arranged. "You need not fear," he said breaking the silence, "I shall not drift and drift and at last get silted up in a stagnant pool of decaying promises. My time will come, and when it comes I shall be ready for it, and none the worse, I hope, for this interregnum." "Heaven send it soon. I have no faith in your reflections. They may lead you anywhere. You're such a queer chap. Think of a man like you, looking forward, actually looking forward, to burying himself at the ends of the earth in the hey-day of his youth." Peter laughed, a hopeful, manly laugh. He had no fears. "You'll come and stay with me next summer, old fellow?" he said. "Lord! do you expect to see me in that Hyperborean inaccessible, out-of-the-world vale of yours? Aren't the people savages, heathen, Goths? Didn't you once speak of a giantess, a sort of Polyphemus's mamma, that lived in a cave and herded sheep?"