'You want to be watered, after all that parching in India. It isn't raining now, and such a jolly cool day!'
'Jollier for you than a finer day, mayhap,' said the good-natured soldier, who greatly commiserated Lance's enforced idleness, and only wondered at his not making it a greater misery to every one else. He also understood what the inured ears of the family never guessed, since Lance never complained, the distress of Theodore's constant hum and concertina to sensitive ears and excited nerves; and had observed that Lance had flagged ever since the journey to Minsterham, with less of vigour and more of sharpness. Sure that something was preying on the boy, he deferred his least important letters, to splash away with him in mud and mist, and hear him explain his views, with the fullness often more possible towards friend than family.
John was greatly surprised, but did not make any crushing objection, and listened with thorough sympathy. He doubted, however, whether Lance would be doing any real good, and not only throwing more, instead of less work upon Felix. Sensibly enough the boy went into the matter. He said that when Felix began, the staff had also consisted of Mr. Froggatt, Redstone, a lad called Stubbs, and a boy. Now Felix did much more than Mr. Froggatt had then done, and Stubbs was a useful piece of mechanism without a head, and Lance believed himself quite able to fill the place Felix had taken at the same age; indeed, he had far less either to learn or to overcome, and though his arithmetical powers were still in abeyance, he had rather excelled in that line at the Cathedral school.
'I know, of course,' said Lance, 'that a man from a London house would be of more use; but there's this awful salary, and he would never care to look after Felix.'
'I allow that; but even if you can be of much present use, is it not at the expense of greater usefulness by-and-by?'
'I am sick of that! Edgar and Clem both mean to be of use by-and-by, and what comes of it? Edgar has spent Felix's two hundred pounds that he borrowed, and now has got his own, all to repay when he is a great painter. And he is six years older than I am! Now if I earned my guinea a week, as Felix did, it would be real good now, and I should be learning the trade for the future.'
'That's the question. First, would the guinea a week make so much appreciable difference?'
'Is that all you know about it, Jack? First, I should be earning my keep, not eating my head off; and then Bernard might be sent safe off to school.'
'You don't mean to say that otherwise he could not?'
'It has been a terribly costly year. There's Edgar. Then Clem couldn't settle in at Cambridge for nothing; there's been Alda turned back on Felix's hands; there's been illness, and goodness knows what the doctors may charge; and there's Felix's outing and mine!'