“Never mind,” said Ethel, seeing him disconcerted. “It is better for them to be drawn up, and you will soon learn their language. If we only had Una M’Carthy here!”
“Then you don’t like it?” said Mary, disappointed.
“It is time to learn not to be fastidious,” he answered. “So, if you will help me—”
“Norman, I am so glad!” said Ethel.
“Yes,” said Norman, “I see now that these things that puff us up, and seem the whole world to us now, all end in nothing but such as this! Think of old Mr. Wilmot, once carrying all before him, but deeming all his powers well bestowed in fifty years’ teaching of clowns!”
“Yes,” replied Ethel, very low. “One soul is worth—” and she paused from the fullness of thought.
“And these things, about which we are so elated, do not render us so fit to teach—as you, Mary, or as Richard.”
“They do,” said Ethel. “The ten talents were doubled. Strength tells in power. The more learning, the fitter to teach the simplest thing.”
“You remind me of old Mr. Wilmot saying that the first thing he learned at his parish was, how little his people knew; the second, how little he himself knew.”
So Norman persevered in the homely discipline that he had chosen for himself, which brought out his deficiency in practical work in a manner which lowered him in his own eyes, to a degree almost satisfactory to himself. He was not, indeed, without humility, but his nature was self-contemplative and self-conscious enough to perceive his superiority of talent, and it had been the struggle of his life to abase this perception, so that it was actually a relief not to be obliged to fight with his own complacency in his powers. He had learned not to think too highly of himself—he had yet to learn to “think soberly.” His aid was Ethel’s chief pleasure through this somewhat trying summer, it might be her last peaceful one at Cocksmoor.