“And what should you do at Oxford? And why do you want to go there when everybody is away?” “Everybody away! That is all you know. The dons are away, if that is what you mean. There are no lectures going on. But lectures are a mere loss of time. There are lots of fellows up there reading. If you want to read hard, now is the best time.” “How curious,” said Bee, in genuine surprise, “when all the people who teach are away! And I never knew that you wanted to read hard.” “No. I never was made to think that I ought to,” said Charlie, with rising colour. “In this house nobody thinks of anything more than just getting through.” Bee was a little angry as well as surprised by this censure upon the family. She said, “The rest of us may not be clever--but everybody says there are few men that know as much as papa.” “Oh, in his special subjects, I suppose, but I am not going in for the army, Bee,” said Charlie, the colour rising higher on his young face, which was still an ingenuous face, though not of a very high order. “It is such a wonderful thing to have your duty set before you, and how you ought to make the best of your life. I, for one, never thought of it before. I was always quite satisfied to get through and to have plenty of time to amuse myself; but if you come to think of it that’s a very poor sort of ideal for a life.” Bee looked up at Charlie with more and more surprise. He was pulling his young moustache nervously, and there was a great deal of emotion in his face. It seemed amazing to his sister that Charlie--Charlie who had always been on the unemotional side, should take this heroic tone, or do anything but laugh at the suggestion of an ideal in life. She gazed at him in some bewilderment. “What are you going to read?” she asked, with doubt and wonder in her voice. “It is just like a girl to ask a man what he is going to read! Why, everything. I just pushed through my mods., you know--a pass--which it covers me with shame to think of now. I must do something better than that. I don’t know that I’m very good at anything, but work, after all, steady work, is the great thing; and if work can do it----!” cried Charley, breaking off, a little breathless, with a strange light in his eyes. “You almost frighten me, Charlie. You were never meant for honours or a high degree, were you? Papa said you need not go in for honours, it would lose time; and you thought so, too.” “I have changed my mind,” said Charlie, nervously. “I thought, like other asses, that in diplomacy you don’t want much; but now I think differently. How are you to understand how to conduct national affairs and all that, and reconcile conflicting claims, and so forth, and settle the real business of the world----” “But Charlie, I thought it was languages, and great politeness, and--and even dancing, and that sort of thing, that was wanted in an attaché----”