Hitherto George had always passed some part of his vacations at Hadley. The amusements there were not of a very exciting nature; but London was close, and even at Hadley there were pretty girls with whom he could walk and flirt, and the means of keeping a horse and a couple of pointers, even if the hunting and shooting were not conveniently to be had.
A few days after the glories of his degree, when his name was still great on the High Street of Oxford, and had even been touched by true fame in a very flattering manner in the columns of the "Daily Jupiter," he came home to Hadley. His uncle never encouraged visits from him in the city, and they met, therefore, for the first time in the old man's drawing-room just before dinner.
"How are you, George?" said the uncle, putting out his hand to his nephew, and then instantly turning round and poking the fire. "What sort of a journey have you had from Oxford? Yes, these railways make it all easy. Which line do you use? Didcot, eh? That's wrong. You'll have a smash some of these days with one of those Great Western express trains"--Mr. Bertram held shares in the opposition line by which Oxford may be reached, and never omitted an opportunity of doing a little business. "I'm ready for dinner; I don't know whether you are. You eat lunch, I suppose. John, it's two minutes past the half-hour. Why don't we have dinner?"
Not a word was said about the degree--at least, not then. Indeed Mr. Bertram did not think very much about degrees. He had taken no degree himself, except a high degree in wealth, and could not understand that he ought to congratulate a young man of twenty-two as to a successful termination of his school-lessons. He himself at that age had been, if not on 'Change, at any rate seated on the steps of 'Change. He had been then doing a man's work; beginning to harden together the nucleus of that snowball of money which he had since rolled onwards till it had become so huge a lump--destined, probably, to be thawed and to run away into muddy water in some much shorter space of time. He could not blame his nephew: he could not call him idle, as he would have delighted to do had occasion permitted; but he would not condescend to congratulate him on being great in Greek or mighty in abstract mathematics.