'Pembroke, in November.'

'Oh, I do hope you'll get it.'

'Thank you very much. So do I. It would be very nice to have one.'

'But of course it won't matter so much to you as it did to Harry.
Your family are such very great people, aren't they?'

Ernest smiled a broad smile at her delicious simplicity. 'If by
very great people you mean rich,' he said, 'we couldn't very well
be poorer--for people of our sort, I mean. My mother lives almost
entirely on her pension; and we boys have only been able to come
up to Oxford, just as Harry was, by the aid of our scholarships. If
we hadn't saved in our first two years, while we had our government
allowances, we shouldn't have been able to stop up for our degrees
at all. So if I don't get a fellowship I shall have to take
to school-mastering or something of the sort, for a livelihood.
Indeed, this at Pembroke will be my very last chance, for I can't
hold on much longer.'

'And if you got a fellowship you could never marry, could you?'
asked Edie, going on with her work.

'Not, while I held it, certainly. But I wouldn't hold it long. I
regard it only as a makeshift for a time. Unhappily, I don't know
how to earn my own bread by the labour of my hands, as I think we
ought all to do in a well-constituted society; so unless I choose
to starve (about the rightfulness of which I don't feel quite certain),
I MUST manage somehow to get over the interval. But as soon as I