My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was gone.
“My dear,” then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning my aching ideality—“my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good earnest.”
“Bless me, Austin!—at his age?”
“He is nearly eight years old.”
“But he is so forward.”
“It is for that reason he must go to school.”
“I don’t quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me; but you who are so clever—”
My father took my mother’s hand: “We can teach him nothing now, Kitty. We send him to school to be taught—”
“By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do—”
“By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again,” said my father, almost sadly. “My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed, and asked why. What did the gardener say? ‘To prevent their bearing too soon.’ There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of produce, that the plant may last.”