“Good-bye, Master Archie. Ah! lad, if there were more o’ your kind and your father’s in the country, there would be fewer bad men like—like me.”
“I don’t like to hear you saying that, Bob. Couldn’t you be a good man if you liked? You’re big enough.”
The poacher laughed.
“Yes,” he replied, “I’m big enough; but, somehow, goodness don’t strike right home to me like. It don’t come natural—that’s it.”
“My brother Rupert says it is so easy to be good, if you read and pray God to teach and help you.”
“Ah, Master Archie, your brother is good himself, but he doesn’t know all.”
“My brother Rupert bade me tell you that; but, oh, Bob, how nice he can speak. I can’t. I can fish and shoot, and ride ‘Eider Duck;’ but I can’t say things so pretty as he can. Well, good-bye again.”
“Good-bye again, and tell your brother that I can’t be good all at one jump like, but I’ll begin to try mebbe. So long.”
Archie Broadbent might have been said to have two kinds of home education; one was thoroughly scholastic, the other very practical indeed. The Squire was one in a hundred perhaps. He was devoted to his farm, and busied himself in the field, manually as well as orally. I mean to say that he was of such an active disposition that, while superintending and giving advice and orders, he put his hand to the wheel himself. So did Mr Walton, and whether it was harvest-time or haymaking, you would have found Squire Broadbent, the tutor, and Archie hard at it, and even little Elsie doing a little.
I would not like to say that the Squire was a radical, but he certainly was no believer in the benefits of too much class distinction. He thought Burns was right when he said—