Sylvia felt that there was much to be said for Mr. Gustard’s attitude, and she took his advice so far as to go for a long walk on the Heath that very afternoon. Yet there was something lacking. When she got home again she found that the book of adventure which she had been reading was no longer capable of keeping her thoughts fixed. The stupid part of it was that her thoughts wandered nowhere in particular and without attaching themselves to a definite object. She would try to concentrate them upon Jimmy and speculate what he was doing, but Jimmy would turn into Claude Raglan; and when she began to speculate what Claude was doing, Claude would turn back again into Jimmy. Her own innermost restlessness made her so fidgety that she went to the window and stared at the road along the dusky Heath. The garden gate of next door swung to with a click, and Sylvia saw a young man coming toward the house. She was usually without the least interest in young men, but on this afternoon of indefinable and errant thoughts she welcomed the least excuse for bringing herself back to a material object; and this young man, though it was twilight and his face was not clearly visible, managed to interest her somehow, so that at tea she found herself asking Mr. Gustard who he might be and most unaccountably blushing at the question.
“That ’ud be young Artie, wouldn’t it?” he suggested to his wife. She nodded over the squat teapot that she so much resembled:
“That must be him come back from his uncle’s. Mrs. Madden was only saying to me this morning, when we was waiting for the grocer’s man, that she was expecting him this evening. She spoils him something shocking. If you please, his highness has been down into Hampshire to see if he would like to be a gentleman farmer. Whoever heard, I should like to know? Why he can’t be long turned seventeen. It’s a pity his father isn’t alive to keep him from idling his time away.”
“There’s no harm in giving a bit of liberty to the young,” Mr. Gustard answered, preparing to be as eloquent as the large piece of bread and butter in his mouth would let him. “I’m not in favor of pushing a young man too far.”
“No, you was never in favor of pushing anything, neither yourself nor your business,” said Mrs. Gustard, sharply. “But I think it’s a sin to let a boy like that moon away all his time with a book. Books were only intended for the gentry and people as have grown too old for anything else, and even then they’re bad for their eyes.”
Sylvia wondered whether Mrs. Gustard intended to criticize unfavorably her own manner of life, but she left the defense of books to Mr. Gustard, who was so impatient to begin that he nearly choked:
“Because I don’t read,” he said, “that’s no reason for me to try and stop others from reading. What I say is ‘liberty for all.’ If young Artie Madden wants to read, let him read. If Sylvia here wants to read, let her read. Books give employment to a lot of people—binders, printers, paper-makers, booksellers. It’s a regular trade. If people didn’t like to smell flowers and sit about under trees, there wouldn’t be no gardeners, would there? Very well, then; and if there wasn’t people who wanted to read, there wouldn’t be no printers.”
“What about the people who write all the rubbish?” Mrs. Gustard demanded, fiercely. “Nice, idle lot of good-for-nothings they are, I’m sure.”
“That’s because the only writing fellow we ever knew got that servant-girl of ours into trouble.”
“Samuel,” Mrs. Gustard interrupted, “that’ll do!”