“She said my line of fate was broken,” resumed Willy, “whatever that may mean. She told me I had a very good line of intellect, but it wasn’t properly developed. I dare say the last part of that’s true enough,” he added, with a sigh. “I never got a chance to learn anything when I was a boy. The governor sent me from one dirty little school to another for a couple or three years, and then the national schoolmaster had a go at me, and that’s about all the education I ever had.”
“I dare say you get on just as well without being very good at classics and those sort of things. And, you see, you passed your exam. for your captaincy in the West Cork quite easily,” I said, with a rather lame attempt at consolation.
“That’s quite a different thing; any fool could do that. What makes me sick is to see Nugent and chaps like him, who have been to Harrow and Oxford, and all the rest of it—and here I’ve been stuck all my life, without a chance to get level with them. It’s when I’m talking to you that I feel what an ignorant brute I am!”
“I hate to hear you talk like that, Willy,” I said, really distressed. “I never thought you so—not for an instant. On the contrary, I think you know more than any one I ever met—about practical things; and if you don’t look where you’re going, you will drive over that old woman who is going in at the gate”—as we turned sharply off the road at the Durrus lodge—“and I believe it is that dreadful old Moll, too. I am thankful to say I have not seen her for ever so long.”
CHAPTER XVI.
FERRETING.
“I do perceive here a divided duty.”