“The curate is Mr. Carlyon, your tutor, isn’t he? Oh, Austin, do you like having lessons with him?” asked Frances, with intense interest. Her reverence for knowledge had grown of late, and she wanted, not unnaturally, to find out whether in this direction Austin’s steps had progressed with her own.
“I like it well enough. You see,” he added awkwardly, “I’m not exactly a grind; one must use one’s wits, but I think mine go best with my hands. Only, Carlyon was a swell at Oxford, and he’s got a way of making one think one wouldn’t mind being a swell too.”
Frances looked relieved and quite contented.
“Then he knows a straight ball when he sees one,” Austin continued, “and he’s a crack with his bat. Then when lessons are on, he doesn’t drone away everlastingly about dead-and-gone chaps. There’s one of his cranks we all approve of, somehow.”
“What is it?”
“We’ve half an hour every day for what he chooses to call ‘current events’. Carlyon tells us what’s going on in the world, reads bits out of papers and talks them over, and gives marks to the fellows who remember best.”
“Oh, Austin! I hope you get most marks!” interrupted Frances, with the utterly unreasonable ambition of a sister. Austin felt that he was wanting, and replied grumpily:
“Hang it, I’d like to know what chance I have! The other chaps hear things at home. Mater won’t let me look at a paper, and never talks to me about what she reads herself.”
“Never mind,” said Frances, “I’ll hunt out the news for you, and read the things up, and send you off all ready crammed. I shall like doing it.”
“I know you will,” groaned Austin. “I say, Frances, you’ll shine like the sun at our ‘symposia’—I hope you like that pretty word, Ma’am!”