Howard said that he did not think Jack inclined to orders.

“Then I put that aside,” cried the good-natured Mr. Sandys.  “No compulsion for me—­the children may do as they like, live as they like, marry whom they like.  I don’t believe in checking human nature.  Of course if Jack could get a Fellowship, I should like him to settle down at Cambridge.  There’s a life for you!  In the forefront of the intellectual battle!  It is what I should have liked myself, of all things.  To hear what is going on in the intellectual line, to ventilate ideas, to write, to teach—­that’s a fine life—­to be able to hold one’s own in talk and discussion—­ that’s where we country people fail.  I have plenty of ideas, you know, myself, but I can’t put them into shape, into form, so to speak.”

“I think Jack would rather like a commercial career,” said Howard.  “It’s the only thing he has ever mentioned; and I am sure he might do well if he could get an opening; he likes real things, he says.”

“He does!” said Mr. Sandys enthusiastically—­“that’s what he always says.  Do you know, if you won’t think me very vain, Howard, I believe he gets that from me.  Maud is different—­she takes after her dear mother—­whose loss was so irreparable a calamity—­my dear wife was full of imagination; it was a beautiful mind.  I will show you some of her sketches when you come to see us—­I am looking forward to that—­not much technique, perhaps, but a real instinct for beauty; to be just, a little lacking in form, but full of feeling.  Well, Jack, as I was saying, likes reality.  So do I!  A firm hold on reality—­that’s the best thing; I was not intellectual enough for the life of thought, and I fell back on humanity—­vastly engrossing!  I assure you, though you would hardly think it, that even these simple people down here are most interesting:  no two of them alike.  My old friends say to me sometimes that I must find country people very dull, but I always say, ‘No two of them alike!’ Of course I try to keep my intellectual tastes alive—­they are only tastes, of course, not faculties, like yours—­but we read and talk and ventilate our ideas, Maud and I; and when we are tired of books, why I fall back on the great book of humanity.  We don’t stagnate—­at least I hope not—­I have a horror of stagnation.  I said so to the Archdeacon the other day, and he said that there was nothing stagnant about Windlow.”

“No, I am quite sure there is not,” said Howard politely.

“It’s very good of you to say so, Howard,” said Mr. Sandys delightedly.  “Really quite a compliment!  And I assure you, you don’t know what a pleasure it is to have a talk like this with a man like yourself, so well-read, so full of ideas.  I envy Jack his privileges.  I do indeed.  Now dear old Pembroke was not like that in my days.  There was no one I could talk to, as Jack tells me he talks to you.  A man like yourself is a vast improvement on the old type of don, if I may say so.  I’m very free, you