He contemplated
quite calmly the prospect of living all his life on an income below a
hundred pounds a year. But he was determined to be famous, to make,
recognisably in his own proper person, the world a better place to live
in. He took Bradlaugh and John Burns for his leaders and models, poor,
even impecunious, great men. But Miss Haysman thought that such lives were
deficient on the aesthetic side, by which, though she did not know it, she
meant good wall-paper and upholstery, pretty books, tasteful clothes,
concerts, and meals nicely cooked and respectfully served.
At last came the day of the second examination, and the professor of
botany, a fussy, conscientious man, rearranged all the tables in a long
narrow laboratory to prevent copying, and put his demonstrator on a chair
on a table (where he felt, he said, like a Hindoo god), to see all the
cheating, and stuck a notice outside the door, "Door closed," for no
earthly reason that any human being could discover. And all the morning
from ten till one the quill of Wedderburn shrieked defiance at Hill's, and
the quills of the others chased their leaders in a tireless pack, and so
also it was in the afternoon.
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