Mr Tulliver rubbed his knees, and looked at the carpet in a meditative manner.
“But belike he’s a bachelor,” observed Mrs Tulliver, in the interval; “an’ I’ve no opinion o’ housekeepers. There was my brother, as is dead an’ gone, had a housekeeper once, an’ she took half the feathers out o’ the best bed, an’ packed ’em up an’ sent ’em away. An’ it’s unknown the linen she made away with—Stott her name was. It ’ud break my heart to send Tom where there’s a housekeeper, an’ I hope you won’t think of it, Mr Tulliver.”
“You may set your mind at rest on that score, Mrs Tulliver,” said Mr Riley, “for Stelling is married to as nice a little woman as any man need wish for a wife. There isn’t a kinder little soul in the world; I know her family well. She has very much your complexion,—light curly hair. She comes of a good Mudport family, and it’s not every offer that would have been acceptable in that quarter. But Stelling’s not an everyday man; rather a particular fellow as to the people he chooses to be connected with. But I think he would have no objection to take your son; I think he would not, on my representation.”
“I don’t know what he could have against the lad,” said Mrs Tulliver, with a slight touch of motherly indignation; “a nice fresh-skinned lad as anybody need wish to see.”
“But there’s one thing I’m thinking on,” said Mr Tulliver, turning his head on one side and looking at Mr Riley, after a long perusal of the carpet. “Wouldn’t a parson be almost too high-learnt to bring up a lad to be a man o’ business? My notion o’ the parsons was as they’d got a sort o’ learning as lay mostly out o’ sight. And that isn’t what I want for Tom. I want him to know figures, and write like print, and see into things quick, and know what folks mean, and how to wrap things up in words as aren’t actionable. It’s an uncommon fine thing, that is,” concluded Mr Tulliver, shaking his head, “when you can let a man know what you think of him without paying for it.”
“Oh, my dear Tulliver,” said Mr Riley, “you’re quite under a mistake about the clergy; all the best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The schoolmasters who are not clergymen are a very low set of men generally.”
“Ay, that Jacobs is, at the ’cademy,” interposed Mr Tulliver.
“To be sure,—men who have failed in other trades, most likely. Now, a clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education; and besides that, he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for entering on any career with credit. There may be some clergymen who are mere bookmen; but you may depend upon it, Stelling is not one of them,—a man that’s wide awake, let me tell you. Drop him a hint, and that’s enough. You talk of figures, now; you have only to say to Stelling, ‘I want my son to be a thorough arithmetician,’ and you may leave the rest to him.”
Mr Riley paused a moment, while Mr Tulliver, somewhat reassured as to clerical tutorship, was inwardly rehearsing to an imaginary Mr Stelling the statement, “I want my son to know ’rethmetic.”
“You see, my dear Tulliver,” Mr Riley continued, “when you get a thoroughly educated man, like Stelling, he’s at no loss to take up any branch of instruction. When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.”