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"You talk as if we were paupers," growled Peter.

"Well, so we are, aren't we?" said Gervase brightly. "Jenny was talking to me about it last night. She says we pay thousands a year in interest on mortgages, and as for paying them off and selling the land, which is the only thing that can help us. . . .

"I don't see that it's your job, anyway."

"But I could help. Really it seems a silly waste to send me to Oxford when I don't want to go."

"You need Oxford more than any man I know. If you went there you might pick up some notions of what's done, and get more like other people."

"I shouldn't get more like other people, only more like other Oxford men."

Peter scowled. He intensely disapproved of the kid's verbal nimbleness, which his more weighty, more reputable argument could only lumber after.

"You've got to remember you're a gentleman's son," he remarked in a voice which suggested sitting down just as Gervase's had suggested a skip and a jump.

"Well, lots of them go in for engineering. We're in such a groove. I daresay you think this is just a sudden idea of mine——"