"Once is enough," sighed Julia.

"Indeed, you take it too much to heart. It is only out of Oxford a plough
is thought much of; especially a single one; that is so very common. You
see, Miss Dodd, an university examination consists of several items:
neglect but one, and Crichton himself would be ploughed; because
brilliancy in your other papers is not allowed to count; that is how the
most distinguished man of our day got ploughed for Smalls. I had a narrow
escape, I know, for one. But, Miss Dodd, if you knew how far your
brother's performance on the river outweighs a mere slip in the schools,
in all university men's eyes, the dons' and all, you would not make this
bright day end sadly to Oxford by crying. Why, I could find you a
thousand men who would be ploughed to-morrow with glory and delight to
win one such race as your brother has won two."

Julia sighed again. But it sounded now half like a sigh of relief--the
final sigh, with which the fair consent to be consoled.

And indeed this improvement in the music did not escape Hardie. He felt
he was on the right tack: he enumerated fluently, and by name, many good
men, besides Dean Swift, who had been ploughed, yet had cultivated the
field of letters in their turn; and, in short, he was so earnest and
plausible, that something like a smile hovered about his hearer's lips,
and she glanced askant at him with furtive gratitude from under her silky
lashes. But it soon recurred to her that this was rather a long interview
to accord to "a stranger," and under the moon; so she said a little
stiffly, "And was this what you were good enough to wish to say to me,
Mr. Hardie?"

"No, Miss Dodd, to be frank, it was not. My motive in addressing you,