“Mornin’! Ink!” said Mr Bone, shortly. “Ours like mud. How are you?”
“Ink, Mr Bone?” said the young mistress, ignoring the husky inquiry after her health. “Yes; one of the girls shall bring some in.”
This and the young mistress’s manner should have made Mr Humphrey Bone retire, but he stood still in the middle of the room, chuckling softly; and then, to the open-eyed delight of the whole school, drew a goose-quill from his breast, stripped off the plume from one side of the shaft, and, with a very keen knife, proceeded to cut, nick, and shape one of the pens for which he bore a great reputation, holding it out afterwards for the young mistress to see.
“That beats training, eh? Didn’t teach you to make a pen like that at Westminster, did they, eh?”
“No,” said Sage, quietly; “we always used steel pens.”
“Hah—yes?” ejaculated the old schoolmaster, with a laugh of derision. “Steel pens—steel teaching—steel brains—they’ll have steel machine teachers soon, who can draw a goose like that on a black board with a bit of chalk. Faugh!”
He pointed to one of a series of woodcuts mounted on millboard and hung against the whitewashed wall, stumped away three or four yards, and then returned.
“New ways—new theories—new machines! Wear the old ones out and chuck ’em away—eh?”
“I do not understand you, Mr Bone,” said the young mistress, longing for the interview to come to an end; but he went on, speaking angrily, and ignoring her words—
“When old Widow Marley died, I said to Mallow and the rest of ’em, ‘Knock a hole through the brick wall,’ I said; ‘make one school of it; mix ’em all up together, boys and gals. Give me another ten a year, and I’ll teach the lot;’ but they wouldn’t do it. Said they must have a trained mistress; and here you are.”