“Yes, I know, mother,” said the boy, impatiently; “but somehow he doesn’t seem to teach me.”
“But he is very studious, and tries hard.”
“Yes, I know. But he seems to think I’m about seven instead of nearly seventeen, and talks to me as if I were a very little boy, and—and—and we don’t get on.”
“This sounds very sad, Roy, and I cannot bear to have a fresh trouble now. Your studies are so important to us.”
Roy reached up to get his arms round his mother’s neck, drew her head down, and kissed her lovingly.
“And she shan’t have any more trouble,” he cried. “I’ll get wonderfully fond of old Paw.”
“Roy!”
“Master Palgrave Pawson, then; and I’ll work at my lessons and classics like a slave. But you will read with me, too, mother?”
“As much as you like, my son. Thank you. That has taken away part of my load.”
“I wish I could take away the rest; but I know you’re fidgeting because father hasn’t written, and think that something has happened to him. But don’t you get fancying that, because there can’t be anything. They’ve only gone after a mob of shoemakers and tailors with a counterpane for flag, and father will scatter them all like dead leaves.”