“Why can’t you read the Lesson like a sensible man in its native English? Don’t laugh, children, you know what I mean. There’s no good in this fellow working his brain. He can’t go up again before September, and according to the Bishop’s letter to my father, he is safe to pass, if he could not construe a line, after what he did at Wil’sbro’. The Bishop and Co. found they had made considerable donkeys of themselves. Yes, ’tis the ticket for you to be shocked; but it is just like badgering a fellow for his commission by asking him how many facets go to a dragon-fly’s eye, instead of how he can stand up to a battery.”
“So I thought,” said Herbert; “but I know now what it is to be in the teeth of the battery without having done my best to get my weapons about me.”
“Come now! Would any of those poor creatures have been the better for your knowing
“How many notes a sackbut has,
Or whether shawms have strings,”
or the Greek particles, which I believe were what sacked you?”
“They would have been the better if I had ever learnt to think what men’s souls are, or my own either,” said Herbert, with a heavy sigh.
“Ah! well, you have had a sharp campaign,” said Phil; “but you’ll soon get the better of it when you are at Nice with the old folks. Jolly place—lots of nice girls—something always going on. I’ll try and get leave to take you out; but you’ll cut us all out! Ladies won’t look at a fellow when there’s an interesting young parson to the fore.”
Herbert made an action of negation, and his sister said—
“The doctors say Nice will not do after such an illness as this. Papa asked the doctor there, and he said he could not advise it.”
“Indeed! Then I’ll tell you what, Herbs, you shall come into lodgings at York, and I’ll look after you there. You shall ride Pimento, and dine at the mess.”