'You mean, the hope of helping to maintain grandmamma.' 'Which you will never be able to do, unless you pass through this ordeal, and qualify yourself for skilled labour.' 'I know that,' said Clara; 'but the atmosphere there seems to poison, and take the vigour out of all they teach. Oh, so different from granny teaching me my notes, or Jem teaching me French--' 'Growling at you--' 'He never growled half as much as, I deserved. I cared to learn of him; but I don't care for anything now,--no, not for drawing, which you taught me! There's no heart in it! The whole purpose is to get amazing numbers of marks and pass each other. All dates and words, and gabble gabble!' 'Ay! there's an epitome of the whole world: all ambition, and vanity, and gabble gabble,' said Louis, sadly. 'And what is a gosling, that he should complain?' 'You don't mean that in reality. You are always merry. 'Some mirth is because one does not always think, Clara; and when one does think deeply enough, there is better cheerfulness.' 'Deeply enough,' said Clara. 'Ah! I see. Knowing that the world of gabble is not what we belong to, only a preparation? Is that it!' 'It is what I meant.' 'Ah I but how to make that knowledge help us.' 'There's the point. Now and then, I think I see; but then I go off on a wrong tack: I get a silly fit, and a hopeless one, and lose my clue. And yet, after all, there is a highway; and wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein,' murmured Louis, as he gazed on the first star of evening. 'Oh! tell me how to see my highway at school!' 'If I only kept my own at home, I might. But you have the advantage--you have a fixed duty, and you always have kept hold of your purposes much better than I.' 'My purpose!' said Clara. 'I suppose that is to learn as fast as I can, that I may get away from that place, and not be a burthen to granny and Jem. Perhaps Jem will marry and be poor, and then I shall send his sons to school and college.' 'And pray what are your social duties till that time comes?' 'That's plain enough,' said Clara: 'to keep my tone from being deteriorated by these girls. Why, Louis, what's that for?' as, with a bow and air of alarm, he hastily moved aside from her. 'If you are so much afraid of being deteriorated--' 'Nonsense! If you only once saw their trumpery cabals, and vanities, and mean equivocations, you would understand that the only thing to be done is to keep clear of them; take the learning I am sent for, but avoid them!' 'And where is the golden rule all this time?' said Louis, very low. 'But ought not one to keep out of what is wrong?'