The chief fault in the character of young Peregrine Orme was that he was so young. There are men who are old at one-and-twenty—are quite fit for Parliament, the magistrate’s bench, the care of a wife, and even for that much sterner duty, the care of a balance at the bankers; but there are others who at that age are still boys—whose inner persons and characters have not begun to clothe themselves with the “toga virilis.” I am not sure that those whose boyhoods are so protracted have the worst of it, if in this hurrying and competitive age they can be saved from being absolutely trampled in the dust before they are able to do a little trampling on their own account. Fruit that grows ripe the quickest is not the sweetest; nor when housed and garnered will it keep the longest. For young Peregrine there was no need of competitive struggles. The days have not yet come, though they are no doubt coming, when detur digniori shall be the rule of succession to all titles, honours, and privileges whatsoever. Only think what a life it would give to the education of the country in general, if any lad from seventeen to twenty-one could go in for a vacant dukedom; and if a goodly inheritance could be made absolutely incompatible with incorrect spelling and doubtful proficiency in rule of three!
Luckily for Peregrine junior these days are not yet at hand, or I fear that there would be little chance for him. While Lucius Mason was beginning to think that the chemists might be hurried, and that agriculture might be beneficially added to philology, our friend Peregrine had just been rusticated, and the head of his college had intimated to the baronet that it would be well to take the young man’s name off the college books. This accordingly had been done, and the heir of The Cleeve was at present at home with his mother and grandfather. What special act of grace had led to this severity we need not inquire, but we may be sure that the frolics of which he had been guilty had been essentially young in their nature. He had assisted in driving a farmer’s sow into the man’s best parlour, or had daubed the top of the tutor’s cap with white paint, or had perhaps given liberty to a bag full of rats in the college hall at dinnertime. Such were the youth’s academical amusements, and as they were pursued with unremitting energy it was thought well that he should be removed from Oxford.
Then had come the terrible question of his university bills. One after another, half a score of them reached Sir Peregrine, and then took place that terrible interview—such as most young men have had to undergo at least once—in which he was asked how he intended to absolve himself from the pecuniary liabilities which he had incurred.
“I am sure I don’t know,” said young Orme, sadly.
“But I shall be glad, sir, if you will favour me with your intentions,” said Sir Peregrine, with severity. “A gentleman does not, I presume, send his orders to a tradesman without having some intention of paying him for his goods.”
“I intended that they should all be paid, of course.”
“And how, sir? by whom?”
“Well, sir—I suppose I intended that you should pay them;” and the scapegrace as he spoke looked full up into the baronet’s face with his bright blue eyes—not impudently, as though defying his grandfather, but with a bold confidence which at once softened the old man’s heart.
Sir Peregrine turned away and walked twice the length of the library; then, returning to the spot where the other stood, he put his hand on his grandson’s shoulder. “Well, Peregrine, I will pay them,” he said. “I have no doubt that you did so intend when you incurred them;—and that was perhaps natural. I will pay them; but for your own sake, and for your dear mother’s sake, I hope that they are not very heavy. Can you give me a list of all that you owe?”
Young Peregrine said that he thought he could, and sitting down at once he made a clean breast of it. With all his foibles, follies, and youthful ignorances, in two respects he stood on good ground. He was neither false nor a coward. He continued to scrawl down items as long as there were any of which he could think, and then handed over the list in order that his grandfather might add them up. It was the last he ever heard of the matter; and when he revisited Oxford some twelve months afterwards, the tradesmen whom he had honoured with his custom bowed to him as low as though he had already inherited twenty thousand a year.
Peregrine Orme was short in stature as was his mother, and he also had his mother’s wonderfully bright blue eyes; but in other respects he was very like his father and grandfather;—very like all the Ormes who
