"It's no good to you, of course," said my uncle, "except to pass exams
with, but there you are!"

"You'll have to learn Latin because you have to learn Latin," said my
mother, "not because you want to. 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.