“Send him to school now,” said Doctor Rivals to his mother, “and I answer for his making a figure.”
“Ah, doctor, how good you are!” cried Charlotte, a little ashamed, and feeling the indirect reproach conveyed in the interest expressed by a stranger, as contrasted with her own indifference.
D’Argenton answered coldly that he would reflect upon the matter, that he had grave objections to a school, &c., and when alone with Charlotte, expressed his indignation at the doctor’s interference, but from that time took more interest in the movements of the boy.
“Come here, sir,” said Labassandre, one day, to Jack. The child obeyed somewhat anxiously. “Who made that net in the chestnut-tree at the foot of the garden?”
“It was I, sir.”
Cécile had expressed a wish for a living squirrel, and Jack had manufactured a most ingenious snare of steel wire.
“Did you make it yourself, without any aid?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the child.
“It is wonderful, very wonderful,” continued the singer, turning to the others. “The child has a positive genius for mechanics.”
In the evening there was a grand discussion. “Yes, madame/,” said Labassandre, addressing Charlotte; “the man of the future, the coming man, is the mechanic. Rank has had its day, the middle classes theirs, and now it is the workman’s turn. You may to-day despise his horny hands, in twenty years he will lead the world.”