A Country Gentleman and His FamilyOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
A Country Gentleman and His Family
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Marriage -- Fiction
and the rest of his belongings.
Mr. Warrender himself was not a scholar. He had got through life
very well without ever being at the university. In his day it was not
considered such a necessity as now. And he was not at all critical of
his son. So long as the boy got into no scrapes he asked no more of him.
He was quite complacent when Theo brought home his school prizes, and
used to point them out to visitors. "This is for his Latin verses," he
would say. "I don't know where the boy got a turn for poetry. I am sure
it was not from me." The beautiful smooth binding and the school arms
on the side gave him great gratification. He had a faint notion that as
Theo brought home no prizes from Oxford he was not perhaps getting on so
well; but naturally he knew nothing of his son's experiences with the
Rector and the dons. And by that time he was ill and feverish, and far
more taken up about his beef-tea than about anything else in the world.
They did not make it half strong enough. If they only would make it
strong he felt sure he would soon regain his strength. But how could a
man pick up, who was allowed nothing but slops, when his beef-tea was
like water? This was the matter that occupied him most, while his son
was going through the ordeal above described,--there never was any taste
in the beef-tea. Mr. Warrender thought the cook must make away with the
meat; or else send the best of the infusion to some of her people in
the village, and give it to him watered. When it was made over the
fire in his room he said his wife had no skill; she let all the goodness
evaporate. He never could be satisfied with his beef-tea; and so,
grumbling and indignant, finding no savour in anything, but thoroughly
convinced that this was "their" fault, and that they could make it
better if they were to try, he dwindled and faded away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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