Chapter 34
"I say, Bobus, lend us your Guy Fawkes to pick up the pieces."
"Not if I know it," said Bobus. "You always smash things."
"There's a specimen of the way we learn our lessons," said Caroline, in a low voice, still unseen, as Bobus wiped, sheathed, and pocketed his favourite pen, then proceeded to turn down the lamp, but allowed the others to relight their candle at the expiring wick.
"The results are fair," said Mr. Ogilvie.
"I think of your carpet," said Mary, quaintly.
"We always lay down an ancient floorcloth in the bay window before the boys come home," said Carey, laughing. "Here, Bobus."
And as he came out headforemost at the window, the two ladies discreetly drew off to leave the conversation free.
"So, Brownlow," said Mr. Ogilvie, "I hear you don't want to try your luck elsewhere."
"No, sir."
"Do you object to telling me why?"
"I see no use in it," said Bobus, never shy, and further aided by the twilight; "I do quite well enough here."
"Should you not do better in a larger field among a higher stamp of boys?"
"Public school boys are such fools!"
"And what are the Kenites?"
"Well, not much," said Bobus, with a twitch in the corner of his mouth; "but I can keep out of their way."
"You mean that you have gained your footing, and don't want to have to do it again."
"Not only that, sir," said the boy, "but at a public school you're f.a.gged, and forced to go in for cricket and football."
"You would soon get above that."
"Yes, but even then you get no peace, and are n.o.body unless you go in for all that stuff of athletics and sports. I hate it all, and don't want to waste my time."
"I don't think you are quite right as to there being no distinction without athletics."
"Allen says it is so now."
"Allen may be a better judge of the present state of things, but I should think there was always a studious set who were respectable."
"Besides," proceeded Bobus, warming with his subject, "I see no good in nothing but cla.s.sics. I don't care what ridiculous lies some old man who never existed, or else was a dozen people at once, told about a lot of ruffians who never lived, killing each other at some place that never was. I like what you can lay your finger on, and say it's here, it's true, and I can prove it, and explain it, and improve on it."
"If you can," said Mr. Ogilvie, struck by the contrast with the little brother.
"That's what I want to do," said Bobus; "to deal with real things, not words and empty fancies. I know languages are necessary; but if one can read a Latin book, and understand a Greek technical term, that's all that is of use. If my uncle won't let me study physical science in Germany,
"I do not think you understand what you would throw away. What is the difference between Higg, the bone-setter, and Dr. Leslie?"
"Higg can do that one thing just by instinct. He is uneducated."
"And in a measure it is so with all who throw themselves into some special pursuit without waiting for the mind and character to have full training and expansion. If you mean to be a great surgeon--"
"I don't mean to be a surgeon."
"A physician then."
"No, sir. Please don't let my mother fancy I mean to be in practice, at everyone's beck and call. I've seen too much of that. I mean to get a professors.h.i.+p, and have time and apparatus for researches, so as to get to the bottom of everything," said the boy, with the vast purposes of his age.
"Your chances will be much better if you go up from a public school, trained in accuracy by the thorough work of language, and made more powerful by the very fact of not having followed merely your own bent.
Your contempt for the cla.s.sics shows how one-sided you are growing.
Besides, I thought you knew that the days are over of unmitigated cla.s.sics. You would have many more opportunities, and much better ones, of studying physical science than I can provide for you here."
This was a new light to Bobus, and when Mr. Ogilvie proved its truth to him, and described the facilities he would have for the study, he allowed that it made all the difference.
Meantime the two ladies had gone in, Mary asking where Janet was.
"Gone with Jessie and her mother to a birthday party at Polesworth Lawn."
"Not a good day for it."
"It is the perplexing sort of day that no one knows whether to call it fine or wet; but Ellen decided on going, as they were to dance in the hall if it rained. I'm sure her kindness is great, for she takes infinite trouble to make Janet producible! Poor Janet, you know dressing her is like hanging clothes on a wooden peg, and a peg that won't stand still, and has curious theories of the beautiful, carried out in a still more curious way. So when, in terror of our aunt, the whole female household have done their best to turn out Miss Janet respectable, between this house and Kencroft, she contrives to give herself some twitch, or else is seized with an idea of the picturesque, which sets every one wondering that I let her go about such a figure. Then Ellen and Jessie put a tie here, and a pin there, and reduce the chaotic ma.s.s to order."
It was not long before Janet appeared, and Jessie with her, the latter having been set down to give a message. The two girls were dressed in the same light black-and-white checked silk of early youth, one with pink ribbons and the other with blue; but the contrast was the more apparent, for one was fresh and crisp, while the other was flattened and tumbled; one said everything had been delightful, the other that it had all been very stupid, and the expression made even more difference than the complexion, in one so fair, fresh, and rosy, in the other so sallow and muddled. Jessie looked so sweet and bright, that when she had gone Miss Ogilvie could not help exclaiming, "How pretty she is!"
"Yes, and so good-tempered and pleasant. There is something always restful to me in having her in the room," said Caroline.
"Restful?" said Janet, with one of her unamiable sneers. "Yes, she and H. S. H. sent me off to sleep with their gossip on the way home! O mother, there's another item for the Belforest record. Mr. Barnes has sent off all his servants again, even the confidential man is s.h.i.+pped off to America."
"You seem to have slept with one ear open," said her mother. "And oh!"
as Janet took off her gloves, "I hope you did not show those hands!"
"I could not eat cake without doing so, and Mr. Glover supposed I had been photographing."
"And what had you been doing?" inquired Mary, at sight of the brown stains.
"Trying chemical experiments with Bobus," said her mother.
"Yes!" cried Janet, "and I've found out why we did not succeed. I thought it out during the dancing."
"Instead of cultivating the 'light fantastic toe,' as the Courier calls it."
"I danced twice, and a great plague it was. Only with Mr. Glover and with a stupid little middy. I was thinking all the time how senseless it was."
"How agreeable you must have been!"