'I don't really know yet.
'There is always commerce, of course. Perhaps you may be able to bring to the great world of business some of the ideals you have learned at Scone. But it won't be easy, you know. It is a thing to be lived down with courage. What did Dr Johnson say about fortitude?… Dear, dear! no trousers!
At the gates Paul tipped the porter.
'Well, good‑bye, Blackall, he said. 'I don't suppose I shall see you again for some time.
'No, sir, and very sorry I am to hear about it. I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.
'God damn and blast them all to hell, said Paul meekly to himself as he drove to the station, and then he felt rather ashamed, because he rarely swore.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I Vocation
'Sent down for indecent behaviour, eh? said Paul Pennyfeather's guardian. 'Well, thank God your poor father has been spared this disgrace. That's all I can say.
There was a hush in Onslow Square, unbroken except by Paul's guardian's daughter's gramophone playing Gilbert and Sullivan in her little pink boudoir at the top of the stairs.
'My daughter must know nothing of this, continued Paul's guardian.
There was another pause.
'Well, he resumed, 'you know the terms of your father's will. He left the sum of five thousand pounds, the interest of which was to be devoted to your education and the sum to be absolutely yours on your twenty‑first birthday. That, if I am right, falls in eleven months' time. In the event of your education being finished before that time, he left me with complete discretion to withhold this allowance should I not consider your course of life satisfactory. I do not think that I should be fulfilling the trust which your poor father placed in me if, in the present circumstances, I continued any allowance. Moreover, you will be the first to realize how impossible it would be for me to ask you to share the same home with my daughter.