"How are you, George?" said the uncle, putting out his hand to his nephew, and then instantly turning round and poking the fire. "What sort of a journey have you had from Oxford? Yes, these railways make it all easy. Which line do you use? Didcot, eh? That's wrong. You'll have a smash some of these days with one of those Great Western express trains"--Mr. Bertram held shares in the opposition line by which Oxford may be reached, and never omitted an opportunity of doing a little business. "I'm ready for dinner; I don't know whether you are. You eat lunch, I suppose. John, it's two minutes past the half-hour. Why don't we have dinner?" Not a word was said about the degree--at least, not then. Indeed Mr. Bertram did not think very much about degrees. He had taken no degree himself, except a high degree in wealth, and could not understand that he ought to congratulate a young man of twenty-two as to a successful termination of his school-lessons. He himself at that age had been, if not on 'Change, at any rate seated on the steps of 'Change. He had been then doing a man's work; beginning to harden together the nucleus of that snowball of money which he had since rolled onwards till it had become so huge a lump--destined, probably, to be thawed and to run away into muddy water in some much shorter space of time. He could not blame his nephew: he could not call him idle, as he would have delighted to do had occasion permitted; but he would not condescend to congratulate him on being great in Greek or mighty in abstract mathematics. "Well, George," said he, pushing him the bottle as soon as the cloth was gone, "I suppose you have done with Oxford now?" "Not quite, sir; I have my fellowship to receive." "Some beggarly two hundred pounds a year, I suppose. Not that I mean to say you should not be glad to have it," he added, thus correcting the impression which his words might otherwise have made. "As you have been so long getting it, it will be better to have that than nothing. But your fellowship won't make it necessary for you to live at Oxford, will it?" "Oh, no. But then I may perhaps go into the church." "Oh, the church, eh? Well, it is a respectable profession; only men have to work for nothing in it." "I wish they did, sir. If we had the voluntary system--" "You can have that if you like. I know that the Independent ministers--" "I should not think of leaving the Church of England on any account." "You have decided, then, to be a clergyman?" "Oh, no; not decided. Indeed, I really think that if a man will work, he may do better at the bar." "Very well, indeed--if he have the peculiar kind of talent necessary." "But then, I doubt whether a practising barrister can ever really be an honest man." "What?" "They have such dirty work to do. They spend their days in making out that black is white; or, worse still, that white is black."