Minshull left him, and Mr. Binney spent a very bitter hour by himself. He had never been beaten before when he had made up his mind to succeed, and it enraged him to think of the two hundred beardless boys who would enter Trinity College as freshmen in a month's time, most of whom had succeeded without any difficulty in doing what he could not do even with the most strenuous endeavours. Lucius, for instance, had taken the whole thing very calmly, although he was not a particularly clever nor a particularly diligent boy. Then his thoughts passed on to Mrs. Higginbotham--Martha. That was the worst thought of all. He had written once a week to Mrs. Higginbotham, alluding in an airy way to his new acquaintances, Plato and Virgil and Euclid, as if he and they were on the most intimate terms of familiarity. Now he would have to tell her that their thoughts were too deep for him--for him who had familiarised all England with the mind of a Shakespeare--and that the languages by means of which they expressed their thoughts still presented such a mountain of obstacles to him that it was doubtful if he would ever succeed in getting over them. Still, the confession would have to be made, and Mr. Binney, with that directness which characterised all his actions, determined that it should be made that very night. "I am very, very sorry, Martha," he wrote, "I have really done my best. I shouldn't have been worthy of you if I hadn't. I'm afraid your Peter is a bit of a dunce, although he never thought so before. Write and say you will not throw me over for it, and I shall set to work again with renewed earnestness." Mrs. Higginbotham, although deeply disappointed, wrote a very kind and consoling letter from Torquay, where her bronchial tubes, which had assumed complete mastery over all her actions, still detained her. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again," she wrote, and thought she had said a very original thing. "I always found, when I was a young lady at school, that if I couldn't master my tasks immediately, the only thing for it was, not to give them up, but to determine that I _would_ master them in time; and my mistress, Miss Dolby--now an angel--used frequently to point me out to the parents of other pupils, and say, 'That child has great determination, and will undoubtedly make her mark.' I am aware that I have not fulfilled Miss Dolby's prophecy up to present date, but your triumphs are mine, Peter, and I trust that we shall both grow famous together." Mr. Binney was much encouraged by Mrs. Higginbotham's letter. He took a holiday and went to Torquay, and by the time Lucius went up to Cambridge early in October, very much relieved at the idea of at least one year free from the companionship of his father as a fellow undergraduate, he had settled down for a hard winter's work in Russell Square. CHAPTER IV NO HELP TO BE GAINED FROM MRS. HIGGINBOTHAM