"I became a member of Thwaite's soon after I left Oxford. As some men go
to the Temple, some to the Stock Exchange, some to Parliament, I went to
Thwaite's. It was the centre of my interest, and I took chambers in Park
Place, St. James's Street, a few steps away. Here I met again constantly
the great sportsman who had noticed me so kindly, and I became his
follower, his disciple. I had started with him on a wave of prejudice in
his favour; because that day when I read in the betting-book what he had
staked against the favourite, I laid all the cash and credit I could get
with his outsiders and against the favourite, and I won five hundred
pounds. What he won--to my youthful eyes-was fabulous. There's no use
saying what you think--you kind friends, who've always done something in
life--that I was a good-for-nothing creature to give myself up to the
turf, to horses and jockeys, and the janissaries of sport. You must
remember that for generations my family had run on a very narrow margin
of succession, there seldom, if ever, being more than two born in any
generation of the family, so that there was always enough for the younger
son or daughter; and to take up a profession was not necessary for
livelihood. If my mother, who was an intellectual and able woman, had
lived, it's hard to tell what I should have become; for steered aright,
given true ideas of what life should mean to a man, I might have become
ambitious and forged ahead in one direction or another. But there it
was, she died when I was ten, and there was no one to mould me. At Eton,
at Oxford-well, they are not preparatory schools to the business of life.
And when at twenty-four I inherited the fortune my mother left me, I had
only one idea: to live the life of a sporting gentleman. I had a name as
a cricketer--"

"Ah--I remember, Crozier of Lammis !" interjected the Young Doctor
involuntarily. "I'm a north of Ireland man, but I remember--"