“What! appoint a tutor to each of them, and let them make the grand tour, see a bit of Europe, and then settle down?”
“Bother tutors and your grand tour! How would we have liked at their age to have had tutors hung on to us?”
“Well, Lyle, we might have had tutors, but I’ll be bound we would have been masters.”
“Yes. Well, boys will be boys, and I know nothing would please our lads better than seeing the world; so suppose we say to them, We can afford you a hundred or two a year if you care to go and see a bit of life, and don’t lose yourselves, what do you think they would reply?”
“I don’t know exactly what they would reply, but I know they would jump at the offer, and put us down as model parents. But then, we have their mothers to consult.”
“Well, consult them, but put the matter very straight and clear before their eyes. Explain to our worthy wives that boys cannot always be in leading strings, that the only kind of education a gentleman can have to fit him for the battle of life, is that which he gains from his experience in roughing it and in rubbing shoulders with the wide world.”
“Good; that ought to fetch them.”
“Yes; and we may add that after a young man has seen the world, he is more likely to settle down, and lead a quiet respectable life at home.”
“As a country squire!”
“Oh yes; country squire will do, and we might throw Parliament in, eh? Member for the county—how does that sound?”