'I am so sorry,' she said doubtfully. 'I never once thought of its happening till Dr. Lomax's letter came; for you know, Cecil, you told me you meant to work. Oh! don't you remember saying it here, in this very place, when you were making the new bars to Lop-ear's hutch?' 'Well, and I did,' said Cecil gruffly. 'Yes, I know you did; and that made me think you would do it.' 'Well, so I did do it--that's what I mean' said he more gruffly still. 'Did work!' exclaimed she gladly, and quite ready of belief, with the tender trustfulness of a true sister. 'But oh, then, Cecil how was it that they didn't give you marks enough? I thought you would have lots to spare--I did indeed!' 'Humbug!' said Cecil, but not gruffly now; 'it's not so easy to get marks as all that. I was quite sure of having enough, though--so sure that I hadn't a second thought about it; and I can't tell to this moment how it was I didn't, except that Lomax is such a brute!' 'The Doctor!' 'No--his son, the junior master; it was he who counted up the marks.' 'Do you mean the marks you got at the examination?' 'No, the weekly marks I had got in all my studies during the half-year; that's the way they calculate to see whether one may keep the "exhibition."' 'Do you think he can have made any mistake?' 'He might, perhaps, to spite me; it's not likely otherwise, for he's a dab at arithmetic. I asked the Doctor to let me see the book, but he wouldn't; and of course I couldn't tell him what I thought, and it would have been no use if I had.' 'And you did really work all the time?' said Jessie, looking at him tenderly and seriously out of her big black eyes. 'Well, almost all--not quite the last week or two, perhaps: it was awfully hot weather, and being so sure, I thought I might take it easy; but that couldn't have made the difference.' 'I wish you had been able to say you worked quite all the time,' said Jessie gravely, with a little sigh, 'for then father couldn't have been angry.' 'I'm afraid he's awfully vexed, isn't he?' said Cecil, with rather an anxious glance towards the study. 'I think so; and Percy says' (Percy was the cadet) 'that he doesn't know how to manage about your education. Francie and I have been so anxious about it: it would be too dreadful if you were not to be a clergyman, wouldn't it, Cecil?' Cecil said nothing, but absently doled out the last cabbage leaf to the rabbits in such small morsels, that they nibbled at his fingers as if they thought those part of the provender. Jessie was lost in a calculation of whether if Frances and she were to have no new frocks for a twelvemonth, and to save up all their pocket-money, that would make it possible for Cecil to go back to the grammar school, when Mr. Cunningham leaned out of the study window and called him. Though he had been expecting the summons, he started and coloured violently, but ran off at once, going in by the back door, which was the nearest way.