“About Norman? Oh, papa! Did he tell you?”
“When I came home from the hospital last night, at an hour when all respectable characters, except doctors and police, should be in their warm beds, I beheld a light in Norman’s window, so methought I would see what Gravity was doing out of his bed at midnight—”
“And you found him at his Greek—”
“So that was the meaning of his looking so lank and careworn, just as he did last year, and he the prince of the school! I could have found it in my heart to fling the books at his head!”
“But you consent, don’t you, to his going up for the scholarship?”
“I consent to anything, as long as he keeps within due bounds, and does not work himself to death. I am glad of knowing it, for now I can put a moderate check upon it.”
“And did he tell you all about it?”
“He told me he felt as if he owed it to us to gain something for himself, since I had given up the Randall to gratify him—a pretty sort of gratification.”
“Yes, and he will be glad to get away from school. He says he knows it is bad for him—as it is uncomfortable to be singled out in the way Dr. Hoxton does now. You know,” pleaded Ethel, “it is not ingratitude or elation, but it is, somehow, not nice to be treated as he is, set apart from the rest.”
“True; Dr. Hoxton never had taste or judgment. If Norman were not a lusus naturae,” said Dr. May, hesitating for a word, “his head would have been turned long ago. And he wants companions too—he has been forced out of boyhood too soon, poor fellow—and Harry gone too. He does not get anything like real relaxation, and he will be better among youths than boys. Stoneborough will never be what it was in my time!” added the doctor mournfully. “I never thought to see the poor old place come to this; but there—when all the better class send their sons to the great public schools, and leave nothing but riff-raff here, one is forced, for a boy’s own sake, to do the same.”