LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

contraries!” said Richard, smiling. “That is what I was afraid of. I don’t half understand or follow her, and when I think a thing nonsense, I see you all calling it very fine, and I don’t know what to make of it—”

      “You are making yourself out more dull than you are,” said Margaret affectionately.

      “I know I am stupid, and seem tame and cold,” said Richard, “and you are the only one that does not care about it. That is what makes me wish Norman was the eldest. If I were as clever as he, I could do so much with Ethel, and be so much more to papa.”

      “No, you would not. You would have other things in your head. You would not be the dear, dear old Ritchie that you are. You would not be a calm, cautious, steady balance to the quicksilver heads some of us have got. No, no, Norman’s a very fine fellow, a very dear fellow, but he would not do half so well for our eldest—he is too easily up, and down again.”

      “And I am getting into my old way of repining,” said Richard. “I don’t mind so much, since my father has at least one son to be proud of, and I can be of some use to him now.”

      “Of the greatest, and to all of us. I am so glad you can stay after Christmas, and papa was pleased at your offering, and said he could not spare you at all, though he would have tried, if it had been any real advantage to you.”

      “Well, I hope he will approve. I must speak to him as soon as I can find him with his mind tolerably disengaged.”

      The scene that ensued that evening in the magic lantern before Margaret’s bed, did not promise much for the freedom of her father’s mind. Harry entered with a resolute manner. “Margaret, I wanted to speak to you,” said he, spreading himself out, with an elbow on each arm of the chair. “I want you to speak to papa about my going to sea. It is high time to see about it—I shall be thirteen on the fourth of May.”

      “And you mean it seriously, Harry?”

      “Yes, of course I do, really and truly; and if it is to come to pass, it is time to take measures. Don’t you see, Margaret?”

      “It is time, as you say,” answered Margaret reflectingly, and sadly surveying the bright boy, rosy cheeked, round faced, and blue eyed, with the childish gladsomeness of countenance, that made it strange that his lot in life should be already in the balance.

      “I know what you will all tell me, that it is a hard life, but I must get my own living some way or other, and I should like that way the best,” said he earnestly.

      “Should you like to be always far from home?”

      “I should come home sometimes, and bring such presents to Mary, and baby, and all of you; and I don’t know what else to be, Margaret. I should hate to be a doctor—I can’t abide sick people; and I couldn’t write sermons, so I can’t be a clergyman; and I won’t be a lawyer, I vow, for Harvey Anderson is to be a lawyer—so there’s nothing left but soldiers and sailors, and I mean to be a sailor!”

      “Well, Harry, you may do your duty, and try to do right, if you are a sailor, and that is the point.”

      “Ay, I was sure you would not set your face against it, now you know Alan Ernescliffe.”

      “If you were to be like him—” Margaret found herself blushing, and broke off.

      “Then you will ask papa about it?”

      “You had better do so yourself. Boys had better settle such serious affairs with their fathers, without setting their sisters to interfere. What’s the matter, Harry—you are not afraid to speak to papa?”

      “Only for one thing,” said Harry. “Margaret, I went out to shoot pee-wits last Saturday with two fellows, and I can’t speak to papa while that’s on my mind.”

      “Then you had better tell him at once.”

      “I knew you would say so; but it would be like a girl, and it would be telling of the two fellows.”

      “Not at all; papa would not care about them.”

      “You see,” said Harry, twisting a little, “I knew I ought not; but they said I was afraid of a gun, and that I had no money. Now I see that was chaff, but I didn’t then, and Norman wasn’t there.”

      “I am so glad you have told me all this, Harry dear, for I knew you had been less at home of late, and I was almost afraid you were not going on quite well.”

      “That’s what it is,” said Harry. “I can’t stand things at all, and I can’t go moping about as Norman does. I can’t live without fun, and now Norman isn’t here, half the time it turns to something I am sorry for afterwards.”

      “But, Harry, if you let yourself be drawn into mischief here for want of Norman, what would you do at sea?”

      “I should be an officer!”

      “I am afraid,” said Margaret, smiling, “that would not make much difference inside, though it might outside. You must get the self-control, and leave off being afraid to be said to be afraid.”

      Harry fidgeted. “I should start fresh, and be out of the way of the Andersons,” he said. “That Anderson junior is a horrid fellow—he spites Norman, and he bullied me, till I was big enough to show him that it would not do—and though I am so much younger, he is afraid of me. He makes up to me, and tries to get me into all the mischief that is going.”

      “And you know that, and let him lead you? Oh, Harry!”

      “I don’t let him lead me,” said Harry indignantly, “but I won’t have them say I can’t do things.”

      Margaret laughed, and Harry presently perceived what she meant, but instead of answering, he began to boast, “There never was a May in disgrace yet, and there never shall be.”

      “That is a thing to be very thankful for,” said Margaret, “but you know there may be much harm without public disgrace. I never heard of one of the Andersons being in disgrace yet.”

      “No—shabby fellows, that just manage to keep fair with old Hoxton, and make a show,” said Harry. “They look at translations, and copy old stock verses. Oh, it was such fun the other day. What do you think? Norman must have been dreaming, for he had taken to school, by mistake, Richard’s old Gradus that Ethel uses, and there were ever so many rough copies of hers sticking in it.”

      “Poor Ethel! What consternation she would be in! I hope no one found it out.”

      “Why, Anderson junior was gaping about in despair for sense for his verses—he comes on that, and slyly copies a whole set of her old ones, done when she—Norman, I mean—was in the fifth form. His subject was a river, and hers Babylon; but, altering a line or two, it did just as well. He never guessed I saw him, and thought he had done it famously. He showed them up, and would have got some noted good mark, but that, by great good luck, Ethel had made two of her pentameters too short, which he hadn’t the wit to find out, thinking all Norman did must be right. So he has shown up a girl’s verses—isn’t that rare?” cried Harry, dancing on his chair with triumph.

      “I hope no one knows they were hers?”

      “Bless you, no!” said Harry, who regarded Ethel’s attainments as something contraband. “D’ye think I could tell? No, that’s the only pity, that he can’t hear it; but, after all, I don’t care for anything he does, now I know he has shown up a girl’s verses.”

      “Are these verses of poor Ethel’s safe at home?”

      “Yes, I took care of that. Mind you don’t tell anyone, Margaret; I never told even Norman.”

      “But all your school-fellows aren’t like these? You have Hector Ernescliffe.”

      “He’s a nice fellow enough, but he is little, and down in the school. ‘Twould be making a fourth form of myself to be after him. The fact is, Margaret, they are a low, ungentlemanly lot just now, about sixth and upper fifth form,” said Harry, lowering his voice into an anxious confidential tone; “and since Norman has been less amongst

Скачать книгу