Although he hated the business and thought with longing of his studies, stellar and other, in the Kleindorf observatory, Godfrey was quite clever enough to collect what was needed. In fact, some three months later he passed his examination with ease about half-way up the list, and duly entered Sandhurst.
He found the establishment at Garrick Street just such a place as its owner had described. In it were many charming but idle young men, often with a certain amount of means, who were going up for the Diplomatic Service, the Foreign Office, the Indian Civil, or various branches of the army. Of these a large proportion enjoyed life but did little else, and in due course failed in their competitive encounters with the examiners.
Others were too stupid to succeed, or perhaps their natural talents had another bent, while the remainder, by no means the most brilliant, but with a faculty for passing examinations and without any disturbing originality, worked hard and sailed into their desired haven with considerable facility, being of the stuff of which most successful men are made. For the rest, there was the opportunity, and if they did not avail themselves of it Scoones' was not to blame. It was, and perhaps still remains, a most admirable institution of its sort, one, indeed, of which the present chronicler has very grateful recollections.
Among the pupils studying there was a young man named Arthur Thorburn, an orphan, with considerable expectations, who lived with an aunt in a fine old house at Queen Anne's Gate. He was a brilliant young man, witty and original, but rash and without perseverance, whom his guardians wished to enter the Diplomatic Service, a career in which, without doubt, had he ever attained to it, he would have achieved a considerable failure. In appearance he was of medium height, round-faced, light-haired, blue-eyed, with a constant and most charming smile, in every way a complete contrast to Godfrey. Perhaps this was the reason of the curious attachment that the two formed for each other, unless, indeed, such strong and strange affinities have their roots in past individual history, which is veiled from mortal eyes. At any rate, it happened that on Godfrey's first day at Scoones' he sat next to Arthur Thorburn in two classes which he attended. Godfrey listened intently and made notes; Arthur caricatured the lecturer, an art for which he had a native gift, and passed the results round the class. Godfrey saw the caricature and sniggered, then when the lectures were over gravely reproved the author, saying that he should not do such things.
"Why not?" asked Arthur, opening his blue eyes. "Heaven intended that stuffy old parrot" (he had drawn this learned man as a dilapidated fowl of that species) "to be caricatured. Observe that his nose is already half a beak. Or perhaps it is a beak developing into a nose; it depends whether he is on the downward or upward path of evolution."