"But you're not at the Front—if you get my point."
"I don't believe I do," said David.
Civil as David's tone was there was of course a trace of hostility in the words themselves, and in his distress Mr. Brougham decided to go and consult Granby, the head of the school where David had been for five years and where Lawrence still was.
Brougham only went to Granby in desperate straits, for he was a little afraid of his son's schoolmaster. Granby was a tall bald man of fifty, with an expression at once stern and humble—stern with the habit of innumerable decisions, humble with the consciousness that half of them had been wrong. Brougham admired him, but could not be his friend, owing to the fact that he always became in Granby's presence an essential parent and nothing else. Mrs. Brougham, with the protection of her long silences, managed better to retain her individuality in his presence.
"I've come to consult you about David," he began.
Granby visibly shrank. "Don't tell me he's gone too!"
"No—he hasn't; that's it."
Brougham managed to tell his story very satisfactorily, for Granby had the power, rarer than is supposed, of extracting an idea from spoken words.
"He has no enthusiasm—no emotion. I can't understand him. At his age, I venture to say, I would— Well, I've come to you. You've had thirty years' experience of boys."
"Yes," said Granby with his reserved, pedagogic manner. "I've been at it thirty years." He stared at the floor and then, looking up, added: "But I've only had four years of boys as they are now."