The doctor wrinkled his brow and pursed up his lips.
“Ah! ye needn’t tell me. I can see—about half-and-half.”
“Well, yes—about that,” said the doctor.
“To be sure,” said the lady; “and I’m glad of it. What’s wrong with him?”
“Oh, I don’t like to tell tales out of school,” said the doctor jovially. “Not quite so much of a student as I could have wished. His classics are decidedly shaky, and his mathematics—”
“Look here, doctor: can he write a good plain English letter, properly spelt, and so as you can read it without puzzling because he hasn’t dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s?”
“Oh! yes, yes, yes,” said the doctor; “we can do that, eh, Braydon? But there’s rather a long list of black marks against his name,” he continued severely. “For instance, there has been a tendency toward fighting.”
“There, that’ll do, doctor.—Come and give me a kiss, my dear.—Sure, doctor,” she continued, after Nic had obeyed, “he’s coming out to a new country, where that part of his education will be of the greatest value to him.”
“My dear madam!” cried the doctor, staring.
“Oh, I mean it, sir. It’s a new country, full of savages, black and white, and the white are the worst of them, and more shame for us we sent them there, though I don’t know what else we could have done. Dominic, my lad, do you know we’re going to make a convict of you?”