Owen was too eager to notice anything. “Yes. What are you amused at? Then you cut those bits out, and never bother about the rest. In what you cut out you’ll find everything that it is necessary to know in order to map out your life and your work. The whole teaching of Christ, all that is essential, will be in those bits. Later on you may read over the other things, that were obscure, and perhaps some of them will by then be plain. I am to consider what kind of work I have a taste for, and at the same time the work I devote myself to must fulfil certain tests or I am to have nothing to do with it. Work you do with your hands is best of all. I haven’t shown the letter at home yet. I thought I’d think it quietly over down here and talk about it with you. We’ll read the Gospels together. My father wants me to be a solicitor and go into his place, but I don’t want that. On the other hand, I must make up my mind soon, I suppose. I’m seventeen, you know.” I took the letter from him, and read it slowly and with some difficulty as we walked along. After that, I thought over it for a while. “Will you have to earn your living?” “Yes, naturally. There are a good many of us, you know.” “Then I don’t see how the Gospels are going to help you, no matter what way you mark them.” “Why not?” “Because you’ll have to live as other people do, unless you can afford to be different; and other people don’t live according to the Gospels.” Owen was silent. “A carpenter, a gardener, for instance,” he began, “couldn’t they live in accordance with the teaching of Christ? Tolstoy says I will never be happy unless I do.” “It’s all very well for Tolstoy talking: he is his own master and has plenty of money. But how can you be a carpenter or a gardener? Your father would never allow you to, and the first thing would be a quarrel with him. We go down here, over this wall.” Owen scrambled after me. “A man must leave his father and his mother.” “Yes, Owen dear, but you’re not a bit the kind of man who does, to say nothing of leaving your brother and your sisters. At any rate, while you are learning to be a gardener your father will have to keep you.” “I only mentioned those trades because they happened to occur to me; there are plenty of others.” “There are not plenty: that’s just the difficulty I’ve been finding.” We clambered down on to the rocks, from which the sea stretched away, deep and clear and blue, glittering in the hot sunshine, moving with a low, smooth swell, like some huge, splendid, living creature.