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76 as though he were telling her that it would be all right at the Merchants' School. . ..

The cousins left the house together. The trees dripped with water; and the swift and angry wind chased the great clouds farther in one direction; but the sky remained grey and lowering. The far-stretching, straight country-roads vanished at last in a melancholy drab mist; and the two young men at first walked along without a word.

"Well, I went and enquired for you yesterday," said Addie, at last. "You can go in for your exam, Alex . . . and you can go on working there for some time yet. . . . I hope things will go better this time, old chap. . . . You're nearly twenty now. . . . If they don't . . ."

He made a vague gesture; and Alex took his arm:

"It's awfully good of you, Addie, to take so much trouble about me. I too hope . . . that things will go right . . . this time. . . ."

"Mamma would have liked to see you in the army."

"Still, I'm really not cut out for a soldier. . . . It's a pity I didn't think of it before I went to Alkmaar. . . . But, when I was there I felt it at once: there's nothing of the soldier about me."

"And in that way years were lost. . . . Well, I do hope that now, when you're at the Merchants' School, you won't suddenly discover . . . that you're not cut out for a business-man . . . that you're not fit for 'trade.' . . . You can become a consul, you know."

"Yes . . . perhaps . . ."

"It's a pity, Alex, that you don't know things for certain in your own mind . . . that you have no settled ideas. . . ."

"Yes . . . that's just it! . . ."

"But you must become something, mustn't you?