He had barely passed his examinations in his first year, and now in his second, when he should have retrieved himself, he had gone under altogether. And the worst of it all was that Uncle William, who was paying his college bills, and who was rich and childless and would never miss the money, was making a dreadful fuss. Wallace wrote him apologising deeply, and explaining just how it all happened, the inconvenient examinations having come on just when he was labouring under a heavy cold. Mrs. Sutherland wrote her brother explaining still further, Wallace had been ill, he was not at all well now. He had been really quite indisposed all Spring, and it was cruel to blame the dear boy for not studying. But Uncle William seemed to enjoy being cruel. He wrote that he had done his best to give her son an education, but it appeared that it couldn't be done, and he felt it was time to stop wasting money. So he was sending Wallace home to her to see what she could make of him. Perhaps she could find something for him to do in Orchard Glen that would not tax his mentality as the University seemed to have done. Poor Mrs. Sutherland was overcome with grief. Dr. McGarry was too, and he stormed and scolded Wallace and his sister by turns, and ended up by declaring that William was getting to be nothing but a skinflint and that he might give the boy another chance. Wallace alone seemed undisturbed. He felt sure that Uncle William's bilious attack, as he termed his difference with his patron, would pass off, and that he would be ready to forgive him in October. So he settled himself in the old home with a tremendous display of books and a fine appearance of studiousness, and declared he would work so hard that when the Autumn term opened he would pass any examination they could possibly set before him. His mother and uncle caught his optimism and were both soon ready to agree that all would be well. So Wallace spent the Summer very happily in Orchard Glen, lying in the hammock under the trees, always with his books, or driving about the country in the Doctor's car. But poor Mrs. Sutherland had little enjoyment in his home-coming. She was really a very neighbourly soul, in spite of a few strange ideas about social usages, and she was now condemned to the difficult task of keeping Wallace at his studies, and away from the young life about him, and that in a village where the girls were as thick as the thistles along the roadside.