Arthur, during these Græco-Egyptian years, had slid into the groove of a career; he was a house-master at Eton, prosperous and popular, though from time to time his own cloud beset him, and out of it he would announce that the burden of his work was quite intolerable, and that he could not possibly stand it for another term. But this was a fruitful Jeremiad, for it relieved his mind, and he buckled to with renewed energy and that amazing gift of getting through a task more quickly than anybody else could have done it, without the slightest loss of thoroughness, and he added to the work that was incident to his profession an immense literary activity of his own, producing several volumes of verse, and experimentalizing in those meditative essays in which before long he found his own particular _métier_. Hugh, in the same way, after studying at Llandaff under Dean Vaughan, had taken orders in the English Church and was attached to the Eton Mission at Hackney Wick, so that of the three sons I was the only one who had not settled down to any career. By this time archæology, as a scholastic profession, was already closed to me, for Cambridge could not go on giving me grants indefinitely, and in order to crown my days of classical learning with a final failure, King’s had not decorated with a fellowship either the work I sent in on the Roman occupation of Chester, or on certain aspects of the cult of Asclepios. So, in deference to my father’s wishes, I took the first step towards getting a post in the Education Office, collected and sent in testimonials, and craved employment there as an inspector or examiner, I forget which. This regularized matters: that was a respectable employment, and by sending in those testimonials I was doing my best to be respectably employed, and pending appointment I could go on writing, thus treading the path that by now I fully meant to pursue. At no time was it definitely agreed that I should become anything so irregular as a writer of novels, and I suppose that if I had been appointed to a post in the Education Office, I should have taken it up. But those in whose hands the appointment rested thought that the author of _Dodo_ would be a very indifferent educator, in spite of these brilliant panegyrics from his tutors, and for aught I know those testimonials are dustily filed there still.