There had always been great freedom of opinion and speech between the brother and sister in the middle of their warm mutual regard. Oliver was not the man to behave like a Turk to his womankind. Fan had not been accustomed to be treated as an inane dove, neither was she the woman to consent readily to the treatment, whether from father, brother, husband or son. ‘Oh, Oliver, how can you be so conceited and self-willed?’ she protested, indignantly. ‘I thought you were too clever—really, not to be modest; I begin to think learning has made you mad!’ Oliver shrugged his shoulders. ‘An unlucky, unintentional quotation, my dear, which, after all, I dare not presume to take to myself. But I am not the only man who holds views which, thank God, are gaining ground in our day. Look here, Fan, I hope this is not altogether a case of want of ambition, sloth, a taste for low life—if you care to apply that term to the trading class to which our father belonged. It is a point of conscience which is beginning to be mooted among men, whether or not they may be able to act upon it as they ought. You think a great deal of Oxford. If you were down there, you would find some reading men, far before me in scholarship, regretting that they had not learned a trade and maintaining the dignity of labour in its most primitive form.’ ‘Young men will take up any crochet for the sake of contradiction,’ said Fan, with a girl’s narrow dogmatism and ready scorn. ‘Still, if it is any comfort to you,’ continued Oliver, with a laugh not so genial as his laugh was wont to be, ‘there are far more cads and fools in Oxford and the world than such would be reformers—idiotic as you may reckon them in their own line. There are fellows who, like Tito, would not only cut as neatly as possible their greatest benefactors if they happened to be grocers and linen-drapers, but would go far beyond Tito in boasting of the creditable performance. There are numbers of young Englishmen prepared to turn their backs, on the first opportunity, on the iron or the cotton by which their fathers have played their parts, according to their lights, like men, with success (while the iron and the cotton trades were never in greater need of fresh light and guidance), all in order that young England in this direction may vegetate, run to seed, starve or steal, as officers whom the piping times of peace suit best, briefless barristers, or incompetent clergymen.’ ‘But you would not be a briefless barrister or an incompetent clergyman,’ said Fan. Oliver shook his head. ‘I cannot speak in public, I can only hold forth to my own cronies.’ This was true; Oliver was not calculated to shine as an orator; his highly wrought nervous awkwardness was entirely against him; a certain turgidness in the rush of his thoughts proved even a more serious obstacle.