“What at?”

Philip was not prepared for the question, since in fact he had not made up his mind.  He had thought of a dozen callings.

“The most suitable thing you could do is to enter your father’s profession and become a doctor.”

“Oddly enough that is precisely what I intend.”

He had thought of doctoring among other things, chiefly because it was an occupation which seemed to give a good deal of personal freedom, and his experience of life in an office had made him determine never to have anything more to do with one; his answer to the Vicar slipped out almost unawares, because it was in the nature of a repartee.  It amused him to make up his mind in that accidental way, and he resolved then and there to enter his father’s old hospital in the autumn.

“Then your two years in Paris may be regarded as so much wasted time?”

“I don’t know about that.  I had a very jolly two years, and I learned one or two useful things.”

“What?”

Philip reflected for an instant, and his answer was not devoid of a gentle desire to annoy.

“I learned to look at hands, which I’d never looked at before.  And instead of just looking at houses and trees I learned to look at houses and trees against the sky.  And I learned also that shadows are not black but coloured.”

“I suppose you think you’re very clever.  I think your flippancy is quite inane.”

LIII

Taking the paper with him Mr. Carey retired to his study.  Philip changed his chair for that in which his uncle had been sitting (it was the only comfortable one in the room), and looked out of the window at the pouring rain.  Even in that sad weather there was something restful about the green fields that stretched to the horizon.  There was an intimate charm in the landscape which he did not remember ever to have noticed before.  Two years in France had opened his eyes to the beauty of his own countryside.

He thought with a smile of his uncle’s remark.  It was lucky that the turn of his mind tended to flippancy.  He had begun to realise what a great loss he had sustained in the death of his father and mother.  That was one of the differences in his life which prevented him from seeing things in the same way as other people.  The love of parents for their children is the only emotion which is quite disinterested.  Among strangers he had grown up as best he could, but he had seldom been used with patience or forbearance.  He prided himself on his self-control.  It had been whipped into him by the mockery of his fellows.  Then they called him cynical and callous.  He had acquired calmness of demeanour and under most circumstances an unruffled exterior, so that now he could not show his feelings.  People told him he was unemotional; but he knew that he was at the mercy of his emotions:  an accidental kindness touched him so much that sometimes