Debt, Imprisonment for -- Fiction; London (England) -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction
Now just as the two girls were different--for one grew up tall and
disposed to be serious, which was Kitty Pleydell, and the other was
small and saucy, always with a laugh and a kiss, which was Nancy
Levett--so the boys became different: for one, which was Will Levett,
a rosy-cheeked lad, with a low forehead and a square chin, grew to
dislike learning of all kinds, and was never happy except when he was
in the stables with the horses, or training the dogs, or fox-hunting,
or shooting, or fishing, or in some way compassing the death of wild
creatures, sports to which his father was only moderately addicted; but
the other, Harry Temple, was more studiously disposed, always came home
with some fresh mark of his master's approbation, and read every book
he could find.
There came a change in their behaviour to the girls as they grew
older. Will ceased to set a dog to bark at them, and to crack a whip
to frighten them, or ride unbroken colts in order to make them cry
out for fear; and Harry ceased to tease and torment them with little
tricks and devices of mischief at which they were half pleased and
half humiliated. When the boys left school they were sent to Pembroke
College, Cambridge, a college in which many generations of Levetts had
been educated. After two terms, Will came home, looking cheerful though
somewhat abashed. He had been rusticated _sine die_, as the phrase
runs: which means that he was not to go back again until he had made
such ample submission and apology, with promises of future amendment as
would satisfy the authorities as to the safety of allowing him back.
It was not known rightly what he had done; there was a story in which
a retriever, a horse, a punch-bowl, a badger, a bargee, a pump, and a
water-trough were curiously mixed up, and his rustication had somehow
to do with the introduction of a proctor (whom one understands to be a
learned and reverend magistrate) and a bull-dog, into this inconsistent
and discordant company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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