As they crossed the hall, Mr. Arnold came in. He looked surprised and
annoyed. Hugh set Harry down, who ran upstairs to get dressed for dinner;
while he himself half-stopped, and turned towards Mr. Arnold. But Mr.
Arnold did not speak, and so Hugh followed Harry.
Hugh spent all that evening, after Harry had gone to bed, in correcting
his impressions of some of the chief stories of early Roman history; of
which stories he intended commencing a little course to Harry the next
day.
Meantime there was very little intercourse between Hugh and Euphra, whose
surname, somehow or other, Hugh had never inquired after. He disliked
asking questions about people to an uncommon degree, and so preferred
waiting for a natural revelation. Her later behaviour had repelled him,
impressing him with the notion that she was proud, and that she had made
up her mind, notwithstanding her apparent frankness at first, to keep him
at a distance. That she was fitful, too, and incapable of showing much
tenderness even to poor Harry, he had already concluded in his private
judgment-hall. Nor could he doubt that, whether from wrong theories,
incapacity, or culpable indifference, she must have taken very bad
measures indeed with her young pupil.
The next day resembled the two former; with this difference, that the rain
fell in torrents. Seated in their strawy bower, they cared for no rain.
They were safe from the whole world, and all the tempers of nature.
Then Hugh told Harry about the slow beginnings and the mighty birth of the
great Roman people. He told him tales of their battles and conquests;
their strifes at home, and their wars abroad. He told him stories of their
grand men, great with the individuality of their nation and their own. He
told him their characters, their peculiar opinions and grounds of action,
and the results of their various schemes for their various ends. He told
him about their love to their country, about their poetry and their
religion; their courage, and their hardihood; their architecture, their
clothes, and their armour; their customs and their laws; but all in such
language, or mostly in such language, as one boy might use in telling
another of the same age; for Hugh possessed the gift of a general
simplicity of thought, one of the most valuable a man can have. It cost
him a good deal of labour (well-repaid in itself, not to speak of the
evident delight of Harry), to make himself perfectly competent for this;
but he had a good foundation of knowledge to work upon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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