“I want to be an engineer officer like you. Can I?”
“There is no reason why you should not if you only work hard, but you have no time to lose. What age are you?”
“I’m nearly fifteen.”
“Then it will be sharp work for you, unless you are tolerably well up in Swat.”
“What is Swat?” I inquired.
“We call algebra and Euclid, and all those things, Swat at Woolwich. Are you good at Euclid?”
This question was an awkward one. I had been so entirely in the hands of my aunt as regards my education, that there were many subjects that I had never heard of, and which other boys of my own age knew well. Up to the time at which Howard asked me if I was well up in Euclid, I had, to the best of my memory, never even heard of Euclid; whilst algebra was also an unknown science. I had done sums of multiplication, and was supposed to have learnt rule-of-three, but I had yet to learn how little I knew, and to discover the difference between real knowledge and a mere superficial smattering. In reply to Howard’s question I had to own I knew nothing of Euclid.
“What have you done in algebra?” he next asked.
“Nothing. I know nothing about it.”
“By Jove! you are behindhand then; and unless you are at once sent to a crammer’s, you won’t get into the Academy even.”