“Oh, nothing, mother.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, only—that—I was going to say, do you like Master Pawson?”
“As your tutor and your father’s secretary, yes. He is a very clever man, I know.”
“Yes, he’s a very clever man,” said Roy, as, after kissing his mother affectionately, he went off towards the west tower, which had been specially fitted up as study and bedchamber for the gentleman who had come straight from Oxford to reside at Sir Granby Royland’s seat a couple of years before this time. “Yes, he’s a very clever man,” said Roy to himself; “but I thought I shouldn’t like him the first day he came, and I’ve gone on thinking so ever since. I don’t know why, but—Oh, yes, I do,” cried the boy, screwing up his face with a look of disgust: “it’s because, as he says, I’ve no soul for music.”
For just at that moment a peculiar long-drawn wailing sound came from the open window of the west tower, and a dog lying curled up on the grass in the sun sprang up and began to bark, finishing off with a long, low howl, as it stretched out its neck towards the open window.
“Poor old Nibbs! he has no soul for it, either,” said the boy to himself, as his face lit up with a mirthful expression. “It woke him up, and he thought it was cats. Wonder what tune that is? He won’t want me to interrupt him now. Better see, though, and speak to him first, and then I’ll go and see old Ben polish the armour.”