“Leave Eton? O no, mother! I can’t do that till the last day possible. I shall be in the eight another year.”
“You will not be here another year unless you go on very differently. Your tutor will not allow it, if I would.”
“Has he said so?”
“Yes; and the next half is to be the trial.”
Jock applied himself to extracting a horsehair from the stuffing of the elbow of his chair; and there was a look over his face as near sullenness as ever came to his gay, careless nature.
Would he attend? or even could he?
When his bills came in Caroline feared, as before, that he was the one of all her children whom Belforest was most damaging. Allen was expensive, but in an elegant, exquisite kind of way; but Jock was simply reckless; and his pleasures were questionable enough to be on the borders of vices, which might change the frank, sweet, merry face that now looked up to her into a countenance stained by dissipation and licence!
A flash of horror and dismay followed the thought! But what could she do for him, or for any of her children? Censure only alienated them and made them worse, and their love for her was at least one blessing. Why had this gold come to take away the wholesome necessity for industry?