“Your schoolmaster?” hazarded the Duke.
“Yes. At least, he is my tutor, because Pa wouldn’t have me go to school, which I had liefer have done, I can tell you! And when it came to his reading to me in the chaise, not even something jolly, like Waverley, or The Adventures of Johnny Newcome, which is a famous book, only of course he took it away from me—he would!— but the horridest stuff about Europe in the Middle Ages! As though anyone could listen to such dry fustian! And in the chaise, sir! There was no bearing it any longer!”
“It was certainly very bad,” agreed the Duke sympathetically. “But they will all do it! I remember my own tutoronce tried to interest me in Paley’s Natural Theology upon one of our journeys from Bath to S—to my home!” he corrected himself swiftly.
“That sounds as though it would be just as dry!” said Tom, impressed.
“Oh, worse!”
“What did you do, sir?”
The Duke smiled. “I was very poor-spirited: I tried to listen.”
“Well, I hit Mr. Snape on the head, and ran away!” said Tom, with a return to his challenging manner.
The Duke broke into his low laugh. “Oh, no, did you? But how did you contrive to do that when you were driving along in a chaise?”
“I couldn’t, of course, but the thing is we changed horses at Shefford, and then when we had not gone a mile out of the town the perch broke, and we were obliged to stop. And the postilion was to ride back to Shefford to procure another chaise for us, and when he was gone old Snape said we would take a walk in the wood, and that would not have been so bad, but what must he do but pull his stupid book out of his pocket again, just when I had seen a squirrel’s drey—at least, I am pretty sure it was one, and I would have found out if he had but let me alone! But he is such a prosing, boring beast he don’t care for anything worth a fig, and he said we would read another chapter, and so I floored him. I have a very handy bunch of fives, you know,” he said, exhibiting his large fist to the Duke, “and I dropped him with a flush hit just behind his ear. And if you are thinking, sir,” he added bitterly, “that it wasn’t a handsome thing to do, to hit him from behind, I can tell you that I owe him something, for he is a famous flogger, and is for ever laying into me. Did your tutor too?”