And afterwards you will have to learn
all sorts of other things...."
The idea that I was to go on learning, that to read and master the
contents of books was still to be justifiable as a duty, overwhelmed all
other facts. I had had it rather clear in my mind for some weeks that
all that kind of opportunity might close to me for ever. I began to take
a lively interest in this new project.
"Then shall I live here?" I asked, "with you, and study... as well as
work in the shop?"
"That's the way of it," said my uncle.
I parted from my mother that day in a dream, so sudden and important
was this new aspect of things to me. I was to learn Latin! Now that the
humiliation of my failure at Bladesover was past for her, now that she
had a little got over her first intense repugnance at this resort to my
uncle and contrived something that seemed like a possible provision for
my future, the tenderness natural to a parting far more significant than
any of our previous partings crept into her manner.
She sat in the train to return, I remember, and I stood at the open door
of her compartment, and neither of us knew how soon we should cease for
ever to be a trouble to one another.
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