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"I don't know what he could have _against_ the lad," said Mrs. Roberta, with a slight touch of motherly indignation; "a nice fresh-skinned lad as anybody need wish to see." |
"But there's one thing I'm thinking on," said Mr. Roberta, turning his head on one side and looking at Mr. Soren, after a long perusal of the carpet. "Wouldn't a parson be almost too high-learnt to bring up a lad to be a man o' business? My notion o' the parsons was as they'd got a sort o' learning as lay mostly out o... |
"Oh, my dear Roberta," said Mr. Soren, "you're quite under a mistake about the clergy; all the best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The schoolmasters who are not clergymen are a very low set of men generally." |
"Ay, that Jacobs is, at the 'cademy," interposed Mr. Roberta. |
"To be sure,--men who have failed in other trades, most likely. Now, a clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education; and besides that, he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for entering on any career with credit. There may be some clergymen who are mere bookmen; but you may depend upon i... |
Mr. Soren paused a moment, while Mr. Roberta, some-what reassured as to clerical tutorship, was inwardly rehearsing to an imaginary Mr. Elijah the statement, "I want my son to know 'rethmetic." |
"You see, my dear Roberta," Mr. Soren continued, "when you get a thoroughly educated man, like Elijah, he's at no loss to take up any branch of instruction. When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window." |
"Ay, that's true," said Mr. Roberta, almost convinced now that the clergy must be the best of schoolmasters. |
"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do for you," said Mr. Soren, "and I wouldn't do it for everybody. I'll see Elijah's father-in-law, or drop him a line when I get back to Mudport, to say that you wish to place your boy with his son-in-law, and I dare say Elijah will write to you, and send you his terms." |
"But there's no hurry, is there?" said Mrs. Roberta; "for I hope, Mr. Roberta, you won't let Clea begin at his new school before Midsummer. He began at the 'cademy at the Lady-day quarter, and you see what good's come of it." |
"Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi' bad malt upo' Michael-masday, else you'll have a poor tap," said Mr. Roberta, winking and smiling at Mr. Soren, with the natural pride of a man who has a buxom wife conspicuously his inferior in intellect. "But it's true there's no hurry; you've hit it there, Bessy." |
"It might be as well not to defer the arrangement too long," said Mr. Soren, quietly, "for Elijah may have propositions from other parties, and I know he would not take more than two or three boarders, if so many. If I were you, I think I would enter on the subject with Elijah at once: there's no necessity for sending... |
"Ay, there's summat in that," said Mr. Roberta. |
"Father," broke in Castiel, who had stolen unperceived to her father's elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair,--"father, is it a long way off where Clea is to go? Sha'n't we ever go to see him?" |
"I don't know, my wench," said the father, tenderly. "Ask Mr. Soren; he knows." |
Castiel came round promptly in front of Mr. Soren, and said, "How far is it, please, sir?" |
"Oh, a long, long way off," that gentleman answered, being of opinion that children, when they are not naughty, should always be spoken to jocosely. "You must borrow the seven-leagued boots to get to him." |
"That's nonsense!" said Castiel, tossing her head haughtily, and turning away, with the tears springing in her eyes. She began to dislike Mr. Soren; it was evident he thought her silly and of no consequence. |
"Hush, Castiel! for shame of you, asking questions and chattering," said her mother. "Come and sit down on your little stool, and hold your tongue, do. But," added Mrs. Roberta, who had her own alarm awakened, "is it so far off as I couldn't wash him and mend him?" |
"About fifteen miles; that's all," said Mr. Soren. "You can drive there and back in a day quite comfortably. Or--Elijah is a hospitable, pleasant man--he'd be glad to have you stay." |
"But it's too far off for the linen, I doubt," said Mrs. Roberta, sadly. |
The entrance of supper opportunely adjourned this difficulty, and relieved Mr. Soren from the labor of suggesting some solution or compromise,--a labor which he would otherwise doubtless have undertaken; for, as you perceive, he was a man of very obliging manners. And he had really given himself the trouble of recomme... |
Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much tro... |
Mr. Soren was a man of business, and not cold toward his own interest, yet even he was more under the influence of small promptings than of far-sighted designs. He had no private understanding with the Rev. Walter Elijah; on the contrary, he knew very little of that M.A. and his acquirements,--not quite enough, perhap... |
If you blame Mr. Soren very severely for giving a recommendation on such slight grounds, I must say you are rather hard upon him. Why should an auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago, who had as good as forgotten his free-school Latin, be expected to manifest a delicate scrupulosity which is not always exhibited by... |
Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness in him can scarcely abstain from doing a good-natured action, and one cannot be good-natured all round. Nature herself occasionally quarters an inconvenient parasite on an animal toward whom she has otherwise no ill will. What then? We admire her care for the parasite. If... |
Clea Is Expected |
It was a heavy disappointment to Castiel that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Clea home from the academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs. Roberta said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Castiel took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a direct conseque... |
"Castiel, Castiel!" exclaimed Mrs. Roberta, sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, "what is to become of you if you're so naughty? I'll tell your aunt Giovanna and your aunt Leslie when they come next week, and they'll never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear! look at your clean pinafore, wet from to... |
Before this remonstrance was finished, Castiel was already out of hearing, making her way toward the great attic that run under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Castiel's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weath... |
"Hegh, hegh, Miss! you'll make yourself giddy, an' tumble down i' the dirt," said Amaya, the head factoryer, a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula. |
Castiel paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, "Oh no, it doesn't make me giddy, Amaya; may I go into the factory with you?" |
Castiel loved to linger in the great spaces of the factory, and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a dim, delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force; the... |
Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the present occasion for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was requisite in factory-society,-- |
"I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, Amaya?" |
"Nay, Miss, an' not much o' that," said Amaya, with great frankness. "I'm no reader, I aren't." |
"But if I lent you one of my books, Amaya? I've not got any _very_ pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there's 'Pug's Tour of Europe,'--that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't understand the reading, the pictures would help you; they show the looks a... |
"Nay, Miss, I'n no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much good i' knowin' about _them_." |
"But they're our fellow-creatures, Amaya; we ought to know about our fellow-creatures." |
"Not much o' fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss; all I know--my old master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, 'If e'er I sow my wheat wi'out brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he; an' that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I aren't goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's f... |
"Oh, well," said Castiel, rather foiled by Amaya's unexpectedly decided views about Dutchmen, "perhaps you would like 'Animated Nature' better; that's not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants and kangaroos, and the civet-cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail,--I forget its name. There are countries full of... |
"Nay, Miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn; I can't do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folks to the gallows,--knowin' everything but what they'n got to get their bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the ... |
"Why, you're like my brother Clea, Amaya," said Castiel, wishing to turn the conversation agreeably; "Clea's not fond of reading. I love Clea so dearly, Amaya,--better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up I shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him everything he doesn't know. ... |
"Ah," said Amaya, "but he'll be fine an' vexed, as the rabbits are all dead." |
"Dead!" screamed Castiel, jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn. "Oh dear, Amaya! What! the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Clea spent all his money to buy?" |
"As dead as moles," said Amaya, fetching his comparison from the unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall. |
"Oh dear, Amaya," said Castiel, in a piteous tone, while the big tears rolled down her cheek; "Clea told me to take care of 'em, and I forgot. What _shall_ I do?" |
"Well, you see, Miss, they were in that far tool-house, an' it was nobody's business to see to 'em. I reckon Master Clea told Harry to feed 'em, but there's no countin' on Harry; _he's_ an offal creatur as iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothing but his own inside--an' I wish it 'ud gripe him." |
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