"No; that's just like him. He feels for the people, for he has been one of us. He worked in a printing-office himself many a year, and he knows the heart of the working man. But he didn't tell you the whole truth about education. He daren't tell you. No one who has money dare speak out his heart; not that he has much certainly; but the cunning old Scot that he is, he lives by the present system of things, and he won't speak ill of the bridge which carries him over--till the time comes." I could not understand whither all this tended, and walked on silent and somewhat angry, at hearing the least slight cast on Mackaye. "Don't you see, stupid?" he broke out at last. "What did he say to you about gentlemen being crammed by tutors and professors? Have not you as good a right to them as any gentleman?" "But he told me they were no use--that every man must educate himself." "Oh! all very fine to tell you the grapes are sour, when you can't reach them. Bah, lad! Can't you see what comes of education?--that any dolt, provided he be a gentleman, can be doctored up at school and college, enough to make him play his part decently--his mighty part of ruling us, and riding over our heads, and picking our pockets, as parson, doctor, lawyer, member of parliament--while we--you now, for instance--cleverer than ninety-nine gentlemen out of a hundred, if you had one-tenth the trouble taken with you that is taken with every pig-headed son of an aristocrat--" "Am I clever?" asked I, in honest surprise. "What! haven't you found that out yet? Don't try to put that on me. Don't a girl know when she's pretty, without asking her neighbours?" "Really, I never thought about it." "More simpleton you. Old Mackaye has, at all events; though, canny Scotchman that he is, he'll never say a word to you about it, yet he makes no secret of it to other people. I heard him the other day telling some of our friends that you were a thorough young genius." I blushed scarlet, between pleasure and a new feeling; was it ambition? "Why, hav'n't you a right to aspire to a college education as any do-nothing canon there at the abbey, lad?" "I don't know that I have a right to anything."