fact it's a nicety of conversation which I would have you attend to - much
quotation of any sort, even in English, is bad. It tends to choke ordinary
remark. One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the
fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves. But
talking of Dons, I have seen Dons make a capital figure in society; and
occasionally he can shoot you down a cartload of learning in the right place,
which will tell in politics. Such men are wanted; and if you have any turn for
being a Don, I say nothing against it.«
    »I think there's not much chance of that. Quicksett and Puller are both
stronger than I am. I hope you will not be much disappointed if I don't come out
with high honours.«
    »No, no. I should like you to do yourself credit, but for God's sake don't
come out as a superior expensive kind of idiot, like young Brecon, who got a
Double First, and has been learning to knit braces ever since. What I wish you
to get is a passport in life. I don't go against our university system: we want
a little disinterested culture to make head against cotton and capital,
especially in the House. My Greek has all evaporated: if I had to construe a
verse on a sudden, I should get an apoplectic fit. But it formed my taste. I
daresay my English is the better for it.«
    On this point Daniel kept a respectful silence. The enthusiastic belief in
Sir Hugo's writings as a standard, and in the Whigs as the chosen race among
politicians, had gradually vanished along with the seraphic boy's face. He had
not been the hardest of workers at Eton. Though some kinds of study and reading
came as easily as boating to him, he was not of the material that usually makes
the first-rate Eton scholar. There had sprung up in him a meditative yearning
after wide knowledge which is likely always to abate ardour in the fight for
prize acquirement in narrow tracks. Happily he was modest, and took any
second-rateness in himself simply as a fact, not as a marvel necessarily to be
accounted for by a superiority. Still Mr. Fraser's high opinion of the lad had
not been altogether belied by the youth: Daniel had the stamp of rarity in a
subdued fervour of sympathy, an activity of imagination on behalf of others,
which did not show itself effusively, but was