“My friends are Fordyce and Craik; they have gone to study the Tapestry.  I said I would look in at it later with you, Bessie:  I counted on you for my guide,” announced Harry with native assurance.

Bessie launched a supplicatory glance at madame, then hazarded a doubtful consent, which did not provoke a denial.  After that they moved to the garden-end of the salon, and seated themselves in friendly proximity.  Then Bessie asked to be told all about them at home.  All about them was not a long story.  The doctor’s family had not arrived at the era of dispersion and changes; the three years that had been so long, full, and important to Bessie had passed in his house like three monotonous days.  The same at Brook.

“The fathers and mothers, yours and mine, are not an hour altered,” Harry Musgrave said.  “The boys are grown.  Jack is a sturdy little ruffian, as you might expect; no boy in the Forest runs through so many clothes as Jack—­that’s the complaint.  There is a talk of sending him to sea, and he is deep in Marryat’s novels for preparation.”

“Poor Jack, he was a sad Pickle, but so affectionate!  And Willie and the others?” queried Bessie rather mournfully.

Concerning Willie and the others there was a favorable account.  Of all Bessie’s old friends and acquaintances not one was lost, not one had gone away.  But talk of them was only preliminary to more interesting talk of themselves, modestly deferred, but well lingered over once it was begun.  Harry Musgrave could not tell Bessie too much—­he could not explain with too exact a precision the system of college-life, its delights and drawbacks.  He had been very successful; he had won many prizes, and anticipated the distinction of a high degree—­all at the cost of work.  One term he had not gone up to Oxford.  The doctor had ordered him to rest.

“Still, you are not quite killed with study,” said Bessie gayly, rallying him.  She thought the school-life of girls was as laborious as the college-life of young men, with much fewer alleviations.

“That was never my way.  I can make a spurt if need be.  But it is safer to keep a steady, even pace.”

“And what are you going to do for a profession, Harry?  Have you made up your mind yet?”

Harry had made up his mind to win a fellowship at Oxford, and then to enter himself at one of the Inns of Court and read for the bar.  For physic and divinity he had no taste, but the law would suit him.  Bessie was ineffably depressed by this information:  what romance is there in the law for the imagination of eighteen?  If Harry had said he was going to throw himself on the world as a poor author, she would have bestowed upon him a fund of interest and sympathy.  To win a little of such encouragement Harry added that while waiting for briefs he might be forced to betake himself to the cultivation of light literature, of journalism, or even of parliamentary reporting:  many men, now of mark, had done so.  Then Bessie was better satisfied.  “But oh what a prodigious wig you will want!” was her rueful conclusion.