the attention he needs, and besides the being with other boys, more his equals, would be invaluable to him.'
'Well, he is rather bumptious.'
'Nothing is worse for a lad of that sort than being cock of the walk. It spoils him often for life.'
'I know exactly the sort of man you mean, always liking to lay down the law and talking to women instead of men, because they don't argue with him. No, Bobus must not come to that, and he is too young to begin special training. Will you talk to him, Mr. Ogilvie? You know if my horse is not convinced I may bring him to the water, but it will be all in vain.'
They had reached the outside of the window of the dining-room, where the school-boys were learning their lessons for the morrow. Bobus was sitting at the table with a small lamp so shaded as to concentrate the light on him and to afford it to no one else. On the floor was a servant's flat candlestick, mounted on a pile of books, between one John sprawling at full length preparing his Virgil, the other cross-legged, working a sum with ink from a doll's tea-cup placed in the candlestick, and all the time there was a wonderful mumbling accompaniment, as there always was between those two.
'I say, what does pulsum come from?'
'What a brute this is of a fraction! Skipjack, what will go in 639 and 852?'
'Pulsum, a pulse-volat, flies. Eh! Three'll do it. Or common measure it at once.'
'Bother common measure. The threes in-'
'Fama, fame; volat, flies; pulsum, the pulse; cecisse, to have ceased; paternis regnis, in the paternal kingdom. I say wouldn't that rile Perkins like fun?'
'The threes in seven-two-in eighteen-'
'I say, Johnny, is pulsum from pulco?'
'Never heard of it.'
'Bobus, is it pulco, pulxi, pulsum?'
'Pulco-I make an ass of myself,' muttered Bobus.
'O murder,' groaned Johnny, 'it has come out 213.'
'Not half so much murder as this pulsum. Why it will go in them both. I can see with half an eye.'
'Isn't it pello-pulsum?'
'Pello, to drive out. Hurrah! That fits it.'
'Look out, Skipjack, there's a moth.'
'Anything worth having?' demanded Bobus.
'Only a grass eggar. Fama, fame; volat, flies; Idomoeea ducem, that Idomaeeus the leader; pulsum, expelled. Get out, I say, you foolish beggar' (to the moth).
'Never mind catching him,' said Bobus, 'we've got dozens.'
'Yes, but I don't want him frizzling alive in my candle.'
'Don't kick up such a shindy,' broke out Johnny, as a much stained handkerchief came flapping about.
'You've blotted my sum. Thunder and ages!' as the candlestick toppled over, ink and all. 'That is a go!'
'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 fagged, 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 nobody 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 classics. 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 had rather go on here, where I can be let alone to study it for myself.'
'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 professorship, 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 classics shows how one-sided you are growing. Besides, I thought you knew that the days are over of unmitigated classics. 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,
