“Oh, I am so glad! Then you have consented to the rest of Norman’s scheme, and will not keep poor little Tom at school here without him?”
“By what he tells me it would be downright ruin to the boy. I little thought to have to take a son of mine away from Stoneborough; but Norman is the best judge, and he is the only person who seems to have made any impression on Tom, so I shall let it be. In fact,” he added, half smiling, “I don’t know what I could refuse old June.”
“That’s right!” cried Ethel. “That is so nice! Then, if Norman gets the scholarship, Tom is to go to Mr. Wilmot first, and then to Eton!”
“If Norman gains the scholarship, but that is an if,” said Dr. May, as though hoping for a loop-hole to escape offending the shade of Bishop Whichcote.
“Oh, papa, you cannot doubt of that!”
“I cannot tell, Ethel. He is facile princeps here in his own world, but we do not know how it may be when he is measured with public schoolmen, who have had more first-rate tutorship than poor old Hoxton’s.”
“Ah! he says so, but I thought that was all his humility.”
“Better he should be prepared. If he had had all those advantages—but it may be as well after all. I always had a hankering to have sent him to Eton, but your dear mother used to say it was not fair on the others. And now, to see him striving in order to give the advantage of it to his little brother! I only hope Master Thomas is worthy of it—but it is a boy I can’t understand.”
“Nor I,” said Ethel; “he never seems to say anything he can help, and goes after Norman without talking to any one else.”
“I give him up to Norman’s management,” said Dr. May. “He says the boy is very clever, but I have not seen it; and, as to more serious matters—However, I must take it on Norman’s word that he is wishing to learn truth. We made an utter mistake about him; I don’t know who is to blame for it.”