“Well?” said Alwyn.
“Well, his sister Bessie said something to him, but he hid his face and said, ‘They’d all die. Robertson says five have.’”
“Poor little chap,” said Alwyn. “It’s too soon to tease him about it. But I must talk to his father, and think what can be done.”
The matter was not settled very easily. Mr Cunningham’s ideas were bounded by giving Wyn a sovereign, and letting him run about the place in any capacity that might turn up.
Bessie, thinking this very undesirable, wanted him to come and board with her, and be apprenticed to the schoolmaster as pupil-teacher. Wyn said that he hated teaching, and couldn’t bear to be shut up indoors. Alwyn hardly knew enough of English life to judge what would be best, but he could not bear the notion that Edgar’s favourite should be left to run to waste, or to a life in which he would not be happy, and at last Sir Philip Carleton made a suggestion.
If the boy really had a turn for plants and flowers, and they wanted to get him into a superior line, why should not an appointment be got for him when a little older at Kew or some other great public garden? If he was clever and took to the work, there were all sorts of openings. And in the meantime, as his education by all accounts consisted chiefly of the names of mosses and lichens, and the habits of birds, field-mice, and other wild creatures of the woods, send him to school—to the great Church public school at Ardingly for boys of his standing—where he would meet other sons of gentlemen’s servants, besides boys of a superior class. He could learn Latin and science, it would be a complete change for him, and the tutors there would soon find out what he was fit for.
Alwyn liked the idea very much. He thought that Wyn had capabilities, and there was an affectionate simplicity about the little fellow that was very engaging. So, as Mr and Mrs Warren gave their grateful consent, it was at once settled that he should go to Ardingly after the Christmas holidays, about the same time as Florence’s passage was taken for New York.