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"Oh, I don't know; it's definitions, and axioms, and triangles, and things. It's a book I've got to learn in--there's no sense in it." |
"Go, go!" said Mr. Roberta, reprovingly; "you mustn't say so. You must learn what your master tells you. He knows what it's right for you to learn." |
"_I'll_ help you now, Clea," said Castiel, with a little air of patronizing consolation. "I'm come to stay ever so long, if Mrs. Elijah asks me. I've brought my box and my pinafores, haven't I, father?" |
"_You_ help me, you silly little thing!" said Clea, in such high spirits at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the idea of confounding Castiel by showing her a page of Euclid. "I should like to see you doing one of _my_ lessons! Why, I learn Latin too! Girls never learn such things. They're too silly." |
"I know what Latin is very well," said Castiel, confidently, "Latin's a language. There are Latin words in the Dictionary. There's bonus, a gift." |
"Now, you're just wrong there, Miss Castiel!" said Clea, secretly astonished. "You think you're very wise! But 'bonus' means 'good,' as it happens,--bonus, bona, bonum." |
"Well, that's no reason why it shouldn't mean 'gift,'" said Castiel, stoutly. "It may mean several things; almost every word does. There's 'lawn,'--it means the grass-plot, as well as the stuff pocket-handkerchiefs are made of." |
"Well done, little 'un," said Mr. Roberta, laughing, while Clea felt rather disgusted with Castiel's knowingness, though beyond measure cheerful at the thought that she was going to stay with him. Her conceit would soon be overawed by the actual inspection of his books. |
Mrs. Elijah, in her pressing invitation, did not mention a longer time than a week for Castiel's stay; but Mr. Elijah, who took her between his knees, and asked her where she stole her dark eyes from, insisted that she must stay a fortnight. Castiel thought Mr. Elijah was a charming man, and Mr. Roberta was quite prou... |
"Now, then, come with me into the study, Castiel," said Clea, as their father drove away. "What do you shake and toss your head now for, you silly?" he continued; for though her hair was now under a new dispensation, and was brushed smoothly behind her ears, she seemed still in imagination to be tossing it out of her ... |
"Oh, I can't help it," said Castiel, impatiently. "Don't tease me, Clea. Oh, what books!" she exclaimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study. "How I should like to have as many books as that!" |
"Why, you couldn't read one of 'em," said Clea, triumphantly. "They're all Latin." |
"No, they aren't," said Castiel. "I can read the back of this,--'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'" |
"Well, what does that mean? _You_ don't know," said Clea, wagging his head. |
"But I could soon find out," said Castiel, scornfully. |
"Why, how?" |
"I should look inside, and see what it was about." |
"You'd better not, Miss Castiel," said Clea, seeing her hand on the volume. "Mr. Elijah lets nobody touch his books without leave, and _I_ shall catch it, if you take it out." |
"Oh, very well. Let me see all _your_ books, then," said Castiel, turning to throw her arms round Clea's neck, and rub his cheek with her small round nose. |
Clea, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old Castiel to dispute with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, and began to jump with her round the large library table. Away they jumped with more and more vigor, till Castiel's hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled about like an animated mop. But ... |
"Oh, I say, Castiel," said Clea at last, lifting up the stand, "we must keep quiet here, you know. If we break anything Mrs. Elijah'll make us cry peccavi." |
"What' |
The Christmas Holidays |
Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and color with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow. |
Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on every sloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth of color; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell from them with a shuddering sound; it clot... |
And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Clea's fresh delight in home, was not, he thought, somehow or other, quite so happy as it had always been before. The red berries were just as abundant on the holly, and he and Castiel had dressed all the windows and mantlepieces and picture-frames on Christmas eve with as much ... |
Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr. Roberta. He was irate and defiant; and Clea, though he espoused his father's quarrels and shared his father's sense of injury, was not without some of the feeling that oppressed Castiel when Mr. Roberta got louder and more angry in narration and assertion with the increased leisure... |
The particular embodiment of the evil principle now exciting Mr. Roberta's determined resistance was Mr. Petar, who, having lands higher up the Ripple, was taking measures for their irrigation, which either were, or would be, or were bound to be (on the principle that water was water), an infringement on Mr. Roberta's... |
"Why, Petar's a new name hereabout, brother, isn't it?" she said; "he didn't own the land in father's time, nor yours either, before I was married." |
"New name? Yes, I should think it _is_ a new name," said Mr. Roberta, with angry emphasis. "Dorlcote Mill's been in our family a hundred year and better, and nobody ever heard of a Petar meddling with the river, till this fellow came and bought Bincome's farm out of hand, before anybody else could so much as say 'snap... |
"You won't be forced to go to law with him, I hope, brother?" said Mrs. Patrice, with some anxiety. |
"I don't know what I shall be forced to; but I know what I shall force _him_ to, with his dikes and erigations, if there's any law to be brought to bear o' the right side. I know well enough who's at the bottom of it; he's got Matt to back him and egg him on. I know Matt tells him the law can't touch him for it, but t... |
Mr. Roberta was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved by employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of cock-fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the st... |
"Doris's no fool; you needn't tell me that," he observed presently, in a pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer's capabilities; "but, you see, he isn't up to the law as Matt is. And water's a very particular thing; you can't pick it up with a pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry an... |
Clea, looking round with some anxiety at this announcement of his prospects, unthinkingly withdrew a small rattle he was amusing baby Patrice with, whereupon she, being a baby that knew her own mind with remarkable clearness, instantaneously expressed her sentiments in a piercing yell, and was not to be appeased even ... |
"I'm sorry to see brother so put out about this water work." |
"It's your brother's way, Mrs. Patrice; I'd never anything o' that sort before I was married," said Mrs. Roberta, with a half-implied reproach. She always spoke of her husband as "your brother" to Mrs. Patrice in any case when his line of conduct was not matter of pure admiration. Amiable Mrs. Roberta, who was never a... |
"I hope and pray he won't go to law," said Mrs. Patrice, "for there's never any knowing where that'll end. And the right doesn't allays win. This Mr. Petar's a rich man, by what I can make out, and the rich mostly get things their own way." |
"As to that," said Mrs. Roberta, stroking her dress down, "I've seen what riches are in my own family; for my sisters have got husbands as can afford to do pretty much what they like. But I think sometimes I shall be drove off my head with the talk about this law and erigation; and my sisters lay all the fault to me, ... |
"Well," said Mrs. Patrice, "I don't think I should like my husband if he hadn't got any wits of his own, and I had to find head-piece for him. It's a deal easier to do what pleases one's husband, than to be puzzling what else one should do." |
"If people come to talk o' doing what pleases their husbands," said Mrs. Roberta, with a faint imitation of her sister Giovanna, "I'm sure your brother might have waited a long while before he'd have found a wife that 'ud have let him have his say in everything, as I do. It's nothing but law and erigation now, from wh... |
Mrs. Roberta, as we have seen, was not without influence over her husband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either what she wishes, or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that were threatening to hurry Mr. Roberta into "law," Mrs. Roberta's monotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force; it m... |
But not even a direct argument from that typical Dodson female herself against his going to law could have heightened his disposition toward it so much as the mere thought of Matt, continually freshened by the sight of the too able attorney on market-days. Matt, to his certain knowledge, was (metaphorically speaking) ... |
Much rumination had Mr. Roberta on these puzzling subjects during his rides on the gray horse; much turning of the head from side to side, as the scales dipped alternately; but the probable result was still out of sight, only to be reached through much hot argument and iteration in domestic and social life. That initi... |
"Father," said Clea, one evening near the end of the holidays, "uncle Giovanna says Myles Matt _is_ going to send his son to Mr. Elijah. It isn't true, what they said about his going to be sent to France. You won't like me to go to school with Matt's son, shall you?" |
"It's no matter for that, my boy," said Mr. Roberta; "don't you learn anything bad of him, that's all. The lad's a poor deformed creatur, and takes after his mother in the face; I think there isn't much of his father in him. It's a sign Matt thinks high o' Mr. Sterling, as he sends his son to him, and Matt knows meal ... |
Mr. Roberta in his heart was rather proud of the fact that his son was to have the same advantages as Matt's; but Clea was not at all easy on the point. It would have been much clearer if the lawyer's son had not been deformed, for then Clea would have had the prospect of pitching into him with all that freedom which ... |
The New Schoolfellow |
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