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If only he could get rid of drudgery, and write his best about the things he loves. Nobody knows what a mind he has. He is not only a scholar he is a poet. He could write things as beautiful as Mr. Pater's, but his life is ground out of him. "I won't go on writing this it's no good. "Herbert Pryce came down yesterday, and has taken mother and Alice out boating to-day.
Alice Hooper's expression seemed to him that of something weak and tortured. All through the winter, in the small world of Oxford, the flirtation between Pryce of Beaumont and Ewen Hooper's eldest girl had been a conspicuous thing, even for those who had little or no personal knowledge of the Hoopers.
Pryce occasionally took part in it, but only, as Sorell soon perceived, for the sake of diverting a few of Connie's looks and gestures, a sally or a smile, now and then to himself. In the middle of it she turned abruptly towards Sorell. Her eyes beckoned, and he carried her off to the further end of the garden, where they were momentarily alone. There she fell upon him.
"Well, you won't think he looks any the better for his holiday," she said at last, with an attempt at a laugh. "And of course he's doing ten times too much work. Hang work! I loathe work: I want to 'do nothing forever and ever." "Why don't you set about it then?" laughed Connie. "Because " Nora began impetuously; and then shut her lips. She diverged to the subject of Mr. Pryce.
Captain Pryce was in great glee, for, if all went well, his little jest would be a brilliant success, and by daybreak his would be the foremost vessel of the squadron, and therefore the first to come up with the Black Pearl. But where was the pirate?
But the face of little Alice Hooper, which he caught from time to time, watching with a strained and furtive attention the conversation between Pryce and her cousin, was really a tragedy; at least a tragi-comedy. Some girls are born to be supplanted! But who was it Sorell was, introducing to her now? to the evident annoyance of Mr. Pryce, who must needs vacate the field.
Alice flushed and took it. It was from Lord Glaramara, and it concerned that same post in the Conservative Central Office on which Herbert Pryce had had his eyes for some time. The man holding it had been "going" for months, but was now, at last, gone.
The laughing girl stooped over Connie, and said in her ear "Now that Herbert knows it would be no good proposing to you, he thinks it might be a useful thing to have you for a relation." "Don't be horrid!" said Constance. "If I were Alice " "You'd punch my head?" Nora laughed. "All very well. But Alice doesn't much care why Herbert Pryce marries her, so long as he does marry her."
"I was perfectly dignified." Herbert Pryce was a young fellow and tutor a mathematical fellow; and therefore, Alice's father, for whom Greek was the only study worth the brains of a rational being, could not be got to take the smallest interest in him.
Sorell's oar dropped into the water with a splash. At Marston Ferry, there was a general disembarking, a ramble along the river bank and tea under a group of elms beside a broad reach of the stream. Sorell noticed, that in spite of the regrouping of the two boat loads, as they mingled in the walk, Herbert Pryce never left Connie's side.
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