But the experiment was not a success. It was declared afterwards that
Anthony Ditchburn, in the intervals of falling asleep and much smoking
of pipes, quoted Horace to the silent wondering babies, and even read a
scrap or two from the monumental work; but he taught them nothing. Jimmy
drew pictures for their delight on some of the tutor's sacred margins;
and they whispered together, what time Anthony Ditchburn slumbered; but
Old Paul saw that another arrangement must be made.
The further experiment involved the rector. Old Paul only knew him
casually, chiefly because the Rev. Temple Purdue, having been much
exercised in his mind over the strange household of Daisley Place, had
called, with the view to a better understanding of all the
circumstances; and had gone away utterly bewildered, and with no
understanding at all. But he, too, was a man of learning, and in a small
way, a man of family, for he had a son. It occurred to Old Paul that it
might be possible to induce the rector to give lessons to those babies
who, from the educational standpoint, were beginning to be troublesome.
Therefore he called upon the Rev. Temple Purdue, and broached the
matter.
The rector was a small, mild, spectacled man of a frightened aspect; he
had been left a widower some two or three years before, and it was his
painful duty to pass the modest headstone erected to the memory of the
late Mrs. Temple Purdue twice on Sundays, and occasionally on other
evenings. In sleepy Daisley Cross he was certainly very much out of his
element; may be said, indeed, to have fluttered about among his sturdy,
slow flock, like a small timid hen in charge of rather large and heavy
ducks. But he was a conscientious little man, with a large leaven of
unworked geniality in him.
He had held up hands of protest at the mention of the large sum which
Old Paul was prepared to pay for the education of the children; had
compromised gratefully on something a little more than half; and had
told himself that undreamt-of luxuries, in the shape of books and other
matters, were to be his for the future. And the children--shy at
first--had gone across to the rectory each morning, and had been well
and carefully grounded.
That arrangement of necessity involved the son of the Rev. Temple
Purdue--Charlie. Up to that time, Charlie Purdue had been a lonely,
restless, mischievous boy of about the same age as Jimmy--roaming the
neighbourhood, something to its scandal, and listening impatiently to
mild and nervous lectures in the evening times from his father. Now,
suddenly, new interests came into his days; these children he had only
seen from a distance were intimately concerned with him in the first
dreary journeys into the mysterious land of Knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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