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It was a cold, wet January day on which Clea went back to school; a day quite in keeping with this severe phase of his destiny. If he had not carried in his pocket a parcel of sugar-candy and a small Dutch doll for little Laura, there would have been no ray of expected pleasure to enliven the general gloom. But he lik... |
"Well, Roberta, we're glad to see you again," said Mr. Elijah, heartily. "Take off your wrappings and come into the study till dinner. You'll find a bright fire there, and a new companion." |
Clea felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his woollen comforter and other wrappings. He had seen Carlene Matt at St. Ogg's, but had always turned his eyes away from him as quickly as possible. He would have disliked having a deformed boy for his companion, even if Carlene had not been the son of a bad man. ... |
"Here is a new companion for you to shake hands with, Roberta," said that gentleman on entering the study,--"Master Carlene Matt. I shall leave you to make acquaintance by yourselves. You already know something of each other, I imagine; for you are neighbors at home." |
Clea looked confused and awkward, while Carlene rose and glanced at him timidly. Clea did not like to go up and put out his hand, and he was not prepared to say, "How do you do?" on so short a notice. |
Mr. Elijah wisely turned away, and closed the door behind him; boys' shyness only wears off in the absence of their elders. |
Carlene was at once too proud and too timid to walk toward Clea. He thought, or rather felt, that Clea had an aversion to looking at him; every one, almost, disliked looking at him; and his deformity was more conspicuous when he walked. So they remained without shaking hands or even speaking, while Clea went to the fi... |
Clea began to look oftener and longer at Carlene's face, for he could see it without noticing the hump, and it was really not a disagreeable face,--very old-looking, Clea thought. He wondered how much older Carlene was than himself. An anatomist--even a mere physiognomist-- would have seen that the deformity of Carlen... |
"Why, that's a donkey with panniers, and a spaniel, and partridges in the corn!" he exclaimed, his tongue being completely loosed by surprise and admiration. "Oh my buttons! I wish I could draw like that. I'm to learn drawing this half; I wonder if I shall learn to make dogs and donkeys!" |
"Oh, you can do them without learning," said Carlene; "I never learned drawing." |
"Never learned?" said Clea, in amazement. "Why, when I make dogs and horses, and those things, the heads and the legs won't come right; though I can see how they ought to be very well. I can make houses, and all sorts of chimneys,--chimneys going all down the wall,--and windows in the roof, and all that. But I dare sa... |
"Oh, yes," said Carlene, "it's very easy. You've only to look well at things, and draw them over and over again. What you do wrong once, you can alter the next time." |
"But haven't you been taught _any_thing?" said Clea, beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that Carlene's crooked back might be the source of remarkable faculties. "I thought you'd been to school a long while." |
"Yes," said Carlene, smiling; "I've been taught Latin and Greek and mathematics, and writing and such things." |
"Oh, but I say, you don't like Latin, though, do you?" said Clea, lowering his voice confidentially. |
"Pretty well; I don't care much about it," said Carlene. |
"Ah, but perhaps you haven't got into the _Propria quae maribus_," said Clea, nodding his head sideways, as much as to say, "that was the test; it was easy talking till you came to _that_." |
Carlene felt some bitter complacency in the promising stupidity of this well-made, active-looking boy; but made polite by his own extreme sensitiveness, as well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked his inclination to laugh, and said quietly,-- |
"I've done with the grammar; I don't learn that any more." |
"Then you won't have the same lessons as I shall?" said Clea, with a sense of disappointment. |
"No; but I dare say I can help you. I shall be very glad to help you if I can." |
Clea did not say "Thank you," for he was quite absorbed in the thought that Matt's son did not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been expected. |
"I say," he said presently, "do you love your father?" |
"Yes," said Carlene, coloring deeply; "don't you love yours?" |
"Oh yes--I only wanted to know," said Clea, rather ashamed of himself, now he saw Carlene coloring and looking uncomfortable. He found much difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind toward the son of Myles Matt, and it had occurred to him that if Carlene disliked his father, that fact might go some way toward clear... |
"Shall you learn drawing now?" he said, by way of changing the subject. |
"No," said Carlene. "My father wishes me to give all my time to other things now." |
"What! Latin and Euclid, and those things?" said Clea. |
"Yes," said Carlene, who had left off using his pencil, and was resting his head on one hand, while Clea was learning forward on both elbows, and looking with increasing admiration at the dog and the donkey. |
"And you don't mind that?" said Clea, with strong curiosity. |
"No; I like to know what everybody else knows. I can study what I like by-and-by." |
"I can't think why anybody should learn Latin," said Clea. "It's no good." |
"It's part of the education of a gentleman," said Carlene. "All gentlemen learn the same things." |
"What! do you think Sir John Crake, the master of the harriers, knows Latin?" said Clea, who had often thought he should like to resemble Sir John Crake. |
"He learned it when he was a boy, of course," said Carlene. "But I dare say he's forgotten it." |
"Oh, well, I can do that, then," said Clea, not with any epigrammatic intention, but with serious satisfaction at the idea that, as far as Latin was concerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir John Crake. "Only you're obliged to remember it while you're at school, else you've got to learn ever so many line... |
"Oh, I don't mind," said Carlene, unable to choke a laugh; "I can remember things easily. And there are some lessons I'm very fond of. I'm very fond of Greek history, and everything about the Greeks. I should like to have been a Greek and fought the Persians, and then have come home and have written tragedies, or else... |
"Why, were the Greeks great fighters?" said Clea, who saw a vista in this direction. "Is there anything like David and Goliath and Samson in the Greek history? Those are the only bits I like in the history of the Jews." |
"Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about the Greeks,--about the heroes of early times who killed the wild beasts, as Samson did. And in the Odyssey--that's a beautiful poem--there's a more wonderful giant than Goliath,--Polypheme, who had only one eye in the middle of his forehead; and Ulysses, a little fel... |
"Oh, what fun!" said Clea, jumping away from the table, and stamping first with one leg and then the other. "I say, can you tell me all about those stories? Because I sha'n't learn Greek, you know. Shall I?" he added, pausing in his stamping with a sudden alarm, lest the contrary might be possible. "Does every gentlem... |
"No, I should think not, very likely not," said Carlene. "But you may read those stories without knowing Greek. I've got them in English." |
"Oh, but I don't like reading; I'd sooner have you tell them me. But only the fighting ones, you know. My sister Castiel is always wanting to tell me stories, but they're stupid things. Girls' stories always are. Can you tell a good many fighting stories?" |
"Oh yes," said Carlene; "lots of them, besides the Greek stories. I can tell you about Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Saladin, and about William Wallace and Robert Bruce and James Douglas,--I know no end." |
"You're older than I am, aren't you?" said Clea. |
"Why, how old are _you?_ I'm fifteen." |
"I'm only going in fourteen," said Clea. "But I thrashed all the fellows at Jacob's--that's where I was before I came here. And I beat 'em all at bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr. Elijah would let us go fishing. _I_ could show you how to fish. You _could_ fish, couldn't you? It's only standing, and sitting still, you... |
Clea, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip in his favor. This hunchback must not suppose that his acquaintance with fighting stories put him on a par with an actual fighting hero, like Clea Roberta. Carlene winced under this allusion to his unfitness for active sports, and he answered almost peevishly,-- |
"I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour, or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing." |
"Ah, but you wouldn't say they looked like fools when they landed a big pike, I can tell you," said Clea, who had never caught anything that was "big" in his life, but whose imagination was on the stretch with indignant zeal for the honor of sport. Matt's son, it was plain, had his disagreeable points, and must be kep... |
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