“Yes;” and the pain was evidently severe.
“Won’t you come to Margaret?” said Ethel, knowing what was the greater suffering; but he did not move, and they forbore to torment him with questions. The next moment Harry came down in an ecstacy, bringing in, from the hall, Norman’s beautiful prize books, and showing off their Latin inscription.
“Ah!” said he, looking at his brother, “he is regularly done for. He ought to turn in at once. That Everard is a famous fellow for an examiner. He said he never had seen such a copy of verses sent up by a school-boy, and could hardly believe June was barely sixteen. Old Hoxton says he is the youngest Dux they have had these fifty years that he has known the school, and Mr. Wilmot said ‘twas the most creditable examination he had ever known, and that I might tell papa so. What did possess that ridiculous old landlubber at Whitford, to go and get on the sick-list on this, of all the nights of the year? June, how can you go on sitting there, when you know you ought to be in your berth?”
“I wish he was,” said Flora, “but let him have some tea first.”
“And tell us more, Harry,” said Ethel. “Oh! it is famous! I knew he would come right at last. It is too delightful, if papa was but here!”
“Isn’t it? You should have seen how Anderson grinned—he is only fourth—down below Forder, and Cheviot, and Ashe.”
“Well, I did not think Norman would have been before Forder and Cheviot. That is grand.”
“It was the verses that did it,” said Harry; “they had an hour to do Themistocles on the hearth of Admetus, and there he beat them all to shivers. ‘Twas all done smack, smooth, without a scratch, in Alcaics, and Cheviot heard Wilmot saying, ‘twas no mere task, but had poetry, and all that sort of thing in it. But I don’t know whether that would have done, if he had not come out so strong in the recitation; they put him on in Priam’s speech to Achilles, and he said it—Oh it was too bad papa did not hear him! Every one held their breath and listened.”
“How you do go on!” muttered Norman; but no one heeded, and Harry continued. “He construed a chorus in Sophocles without a blunder, but what did the business was this, I believe. They asked all manner of out-of-the-way questions—history and geography, what no one expected, and the fellows who read nothing they can help, were thoroughly posed. Forder had not a word to say, and the others were worse, for Cheviot thought Queen Elizabeth’s Earl of Leicester was Simon de Montfort; and didn’t know when that battle was, beginning with an E.—was it Evesham, or Edgehill?”
“O Harry, you are as bad yourself?”