'In that case, I've just heard from my mother that she would like
me to take a tutorship at Lord Exmoor's,' Ernest answered. 'Lynmouth,
their eldest son, was my junior at school by six or seven years,
and now he's going to prepare for Christ Church. I don't quite know
whether it's a right place for me to accept or not; but I shall ask
Max Schurz about it, if I don't get Pembroke. I always take Herr
Max's advice in all questions of conscience, for I'm quite sure
whatever he approves of is the thing one ought to do for the greatest
good of humanity.'
'Harry told me about Herr Schurz,' Edie said, filling in the details
of the doorway. 'He thinks him a very earnest, self-convinced,
good old man, but a terrible revolutionist. For my part, I believe
I rather like revolutionists, provided, of course, they don't cut
off people's heads. Harry made me read Carlyle, and I positively
fell in love with Camille Desmoulins; only I don't really think he
ought to have approved of QUITE so much guillotining, do you? But
why shouldn't you take the tutorship at the Exmoors'?'
'Oh, because it isn't a very useful work in the world to prepare a
young hereditary loafer like Lynmouth for going to Christ Church.
Lynmouth will be just like his father when he grows up--an amiable
wholesale partridge-slayer; and I don't see that the world at large
will be any the better or the worse off for his being able to grope
his way somehow through two plays of Sophocles and the first six
books of Euclid. If only one were a shoemaker now! What a delightful
thing to sit down at the end of a day and say to oneself, "I have
made two pairs of good, honest boots for a fellow-mortal this
week, and now I deserve to have my supper!" Still, it'll be better,
anyway, than doing nothing at all, and living off my mother.'
'If you went to Dunbude, when would you go?'
'After the Christmas vacation, I suppose, from what Lady Hilda
says.'
'Lady Hilda? Oh, so there's a sister, is there?'
'Yes. A very pretty girl, about twenty, I should say, and rather
clever too, I believe. My mother knows them a little.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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