"There, that'll do!" he exclaimed, laughing softly. "This is really idyllic. 'Abercrombie' and 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Jeremy Taylor' and 'Thomas à Kempis.' My poor boy, if you have a headpiece at all, how it must want oiling!" I was a little indignant at his tone and answered him quickly. "I don't know. I'm not sure that I should care for your kind of books very much." He arched his fine eyebrows and the smile still lingered around his lips. "Indeed! And why not? And how have you been able to divine what sort of books mine are, without having seen them?" "Well, perhaps I don't mean that exactly," I answered, sitting on the edge of the table, and thrusting my hands deep down into my trousers pockets, with the uncomfortable sensation that I was making a fool of myself. "I was judging from what you said you were last night. If study has only brought you to pessimism, I would rather be ignorant." "You really are a wonderfully wise boy for your years," he said, still smiling. "But you must remember that there are two distinct branches of study. One, the more popular and the more commonly recognised, leads to acquired knowledge--the knowledge of facts and sciences and languages; the other is the pure sharpening and training of the mind, by reading other men's thoughts and ideas and theories--in short, by becoming master of all the philosophical writers of all nations. Now, it is the latter which you would have to avoid in order to retain your present Arcadian simplicity; but without the former, man is scarcely above the level of an animal." "I think I see what you mean," I admitted. "I should like to be a good classical scholar and mathematician, and know a lot of things. It seems to me," I added hesitatingly, "that this sort of knowledge is quite sufficient to strengthen and train the mind. The other would be very likely to overtrain it and prove unhealthy, especially if it leads everyone where it has led you." "Oh, I wanted no leading!" he said lightly. "I was born a pessimist. Schopenhauer was my earliest friend, Voltaire my teacher, and Shelley my god! Matter of disposition, of course. I had too little imagination to care a rap about cultivating a religion, and too much to be a moralist. Your mother is coming at last, then?" The door opened and I looked up anxiously. The words of introduction which had been trembling upon my lips were unuttered. I stood as helpless and dumbfounded as a ploughboy, with my eyes fixed upon my mother. CHAPTER VII. A MEETING AND A METAMORPHOSIS.