"Henry's only joking, dad," Dora suggested. Her sense of humour was not magnetic. "A jest in earnest, Dora; for the more one learns the less one knows." An amazing fellow: a veritable changeling this Henry! His mother watched him almost like a stranger. "Rank heresy, now, you're talking. I wunner what old Mr. Needham would say to that?" exclaimed his father, who had a fear that his son had grown a trifle conceited. "That I had learned a lot since you wanted him to tackle me on Virgil. But I like my work for all that; in fact, because of it. It is about the only kind of work in which one is learning every day; and I'm beginning to think that the real fun of life is not the knowledge of things so much as the getting to know them." "Well, look 'ere, 'Enry. You're dragging your poor old father out into deep waters, an' you know he can't swim. You're talking like one of your articles. For I read 'em all that you mark with blue pencil, and your mother keeps 'em, even when she's hard up for paper to light the fire." Henry wondered in his heart if, at a pinch, she would have used one for her curl-papers. He noticed just then, for the first time in his life, that the parlour of his old home was very small; the ceiling was so low that he found himself almost choking for breath when he looked up. Dora and her mother were clearing away the tea-dishes, and Henry went upstairs to the bedroom where he would sleep with his father. The old nest had altered in a hundred ways, although none but Henry knew that. He had once been a bird of the brood here, but he had taken wings away, and to return for a fortnight once in two years was only to realise how far his wings had carried him. Henry had been born here, the people that he loved the best of all were still living here in the old home--his old home. Yet it could never be anything but his _old_ home now. We talk about returning home; but really we never do so. Once we leave the home of our boyhood and youth, we never return again. It is seldom we wish to go back to the old life; and when the wish is there, Fate is usually against its fulfilment.