“And heard the singing. It is to produce that marvellous result that we practice. Even I know how awful it is. There was a man called the Reverend P. Henley. I sing the alto of his horrid chant. Would you like to hear me sing? And on Sunday I have the Sunday-school. They use heaps of pomatum, you know. And they learn by heart their duty towards their neighbours, and when I am not looking pull each other’s hair. Then it is Monday again, and we begin all over again. Oh, think of it! You see, I am not by nature a ministering angel, and I have to spend my whole life in ministering to these people. They have no intelligence, nothing that I can lay hold of or join hands with. It is not their fault, and it is not my fault that I am not a ministering angel. But what is the use of battering at their intelligences when they haven’t got any? Also they are personally distasteful to me.” Martin laughed at this tirade, and thoughtfully executed a gnat that had designed to dine off his brown fingers. “Why, I thought you were such a success,” he said. “Father held you up to me as an example and a shining light.” “Of course I’m a success,” cried Helen. “I’ve got to do this sort of thing; and if one has to do something, it is simple imbecility not to do it well. You’re an imbecile, you know, darling.” “Oh, I know that,” said he. “At least I’ve been told it often enough.” Helen was silent a moment, looking very affectionately at her brother’s long, slim figure as he lay stretched on the grass by her side. His straw hat was tilted over his eyes, and of his face there appeared only his chin and his mouth a little open, shewing a very white line of teeth. And the current of her thoughts hardly changed when she went on to speak of him, not herself. “Martin, how is it you can’t get through your examinations?” she asked. “You do work, don’t you? And though I called you an imbecile just now, you have more perception than most people. Or do you spend all your day at the piano?” “He has forbidden me to have a piano in my rooms next term,” said Martin. “So I shall have to waste more time in walking to the pianos of other people and interrupting their work as well as my own.” “Ah, that’s too bad,” said Helen. Martin only grunted in reply, and his sister went on: “But it is foolish of you,” she said. “Indeed it is foolish. No doubt what you have got to do, Greek, Latin, is all very dull to you and seems very useless, but it is surely better to look at it as one of those things that has got to be done. As you say, and as father says, and as I say, I am a success at all these dreadful functions in the Room. Why? Merely because it has got to be done, and therefore, although it is all intensely stupid and bores me so much that I could cry, I attend sufficiently to do it respectably. Now, can’t you adopt the same attitude towards classics? Besides, you know what father feels about it.” “I am perfectly aware of what father feels about it,” said Martin, dryly.