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The newspapers had received the list of prize-winners before the letter announcing my place had come to me. Yes—I had won a scholarship. My name looked out on me, in hard print, from among the twenty under the heading, "Result of the —— —— School Bursary Examination."

My father said not a word—just tapped my shoulder twice lightly with his walking-stick, then put it back under his arm, folded his hands behind his back, and walked up hill looking at the pieces of Macadamised rock glittering in the road.

"You see," said he at length, after a long pause, "your mother had hoped that Jack would go in for some profession at home."

Jack was my elder brother, and he had gone to the Panama Canal first of all, then left the canal to embark in the rubber business in Guatemala, then left that and gone to Venezuela where he was now, according to his letters, managing a horse ranch. Spanish was a language my mother looked upon with regret; for Spanish had carried my brother to all these places.

"Well," said I to my father, "I would rather be in Jack's place than in a university."