Mrs. Colville shook her head mournfully. “I am afraid it is we who forget, love,” she said: “Percy can no longer hope to pursue the career marked out for him—with the very limited means at my disposal, college is quite out of the question; nay, if Sir Thomas Crawley persists in his demand for the incoming tenant’s claim to these dilapidations, and should prove his right to it, I shall be unable to send the boys to school at all; indeed, I must not reject your uncle’s offer rashly. I shall consult Mr. Slowkopf on the subject; he is a very prudent adviser.”
“Oh! if you mean to ask him, the matter is as good as settled, and poor Percy chained to a desk for life,” cried Emily. “Ah!” she continued, as a tall, thin, gaunt figure, clothed in rusty black, passed the window, “here he comes—the creature always puts me in mind of that naughty proverb about a certain person: one no sooner mentions him than there he is at one’s elbow;—but, if you really want to talk sense to him, mamma dear, I’d better go, for I shall only say pert things and disturb you: he is so delightfully slow and matter-of-fact, that I never can resist the temptation of plaguing him;” and as she spoke, the Rosebud laughed a little silvery laugh at her own wickedness, and tripped, fairy-like, out of the apartment.
The worthy Mr. Slowkopf, who had held the office of curate of Ashburn for about two years, was a very good young man, and nothing else; all his other qualities were negative. He wasn’t even positively a fool, though he looked and acted the part admirably. He was essentially, and in every sense of the word, a slow man: in manners, ideas, and appearance, he was behind the age in which he lived; in conversation he was behind the subject discussed; if he laughed at a joke, which, solemnly and heavily, he sometimes condescended to do, it was invariably ten minutes after it had been made. He never heard of Puseyism till Tract Ninety had been suppressed, or knew of the persecutions and imprisonments of Dr. Achilli till that amateur martyr was crying aloud for sympathy in Exeter Hall; he usually finished his fish when the cheese was being put on table; and went to bed as other people were getting up. Still, he had his good points. Unlike King Charles, of naughty memory,
“Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one,”
however dull and trite might be Mr. Slowkopf’s remarks, his actions were invariably good and kind. The village gossips, when they were very hard-up for scandal, declared that, insensible as he appeared to all such frivolities as the fascinations of the softer sex, he was gradually taking a “slow turn” towards the Rosebud of Ashburn. Nay, the rumour was reported to have reached the delicate ears of the “emphatic she” herself; who was said to have replied, that as she was quite certain he would never dream of telling his love till he heard she was engaged to be married to some one else—in which case she should have a legitimate reason for refusing him—the information did not occasion her the slightest uneasiness.
However this might be, certain it is, that on the morning in question, Mr. Slowkopf, gaunt, ugly, and awkward, solemnly walked into the breakfast-parlour, and that the widow, perplexed between her good sense and her loving tenderness for her children, laid before him her difficulties and her brother’s letter.
The curate paused about three times as long as was necessary, and then, in a deep, sepulchral voice, observed—
“In order to attain to a sound and logical conclusion in regard to this weighty matter, it behoves me first to assure myself that I rightly comprehend the question propounded, and if, as I conceive, it prove to be one which will not admit of demonstration with a mathematical certainty; then, secondly, so to compare the different hypotheses which may present themselves, that, sufficient weight being allotted to each, a just and philosophical decision may be finally arrived at.”
Having, after this preamble, stated the case in language as precise and carefully selected as though he were framing a bill to lay before Parliament, and were resolved to guard against the possibility of the most astute legal Jehu driving a coach and four through it, he argued the matter learnedly and steadily for a good half-hour, ere he dug out the ore of common sense from the mass of logical rubbish beneath which he had buried it, and decided in favour of Mr. Goldsmith’s proposal. Pleased at his own cleverness in having solved this difficult problem, and possessing unlimited confidence in his oratorical powers, he volunteered to communicate the decision thus formed to the person most nearly concerned therein, an offer to which Mrs. Colville, feeling her strength unequal to the task, reluctantly consented.