Dick looked down at him reproachfully..
'Oh, Clarry,' he cried with a pained face, 'you know you can't have looked at it. Not a hard bit, indeed! why, it's one of the obscurest and most debated passages in all Thucydides! Now, what's the use of my getting you a nomination, old man, and coaching you so hard, and helping to pay your way at the grammar school, in hopes of your getting an Exhibition in time, if you won't work for yourself, and lift yourself on to a better position?' And he glanced at the wooden mantelpiece, on whose vacant scroll he had carved deep with his penknife his own motto in life, 'Noblesse oblige,' in Lombardic letters, for his brother's benefit.
Clarence dropped his eyes and looked really penitent.
'Well, but I say, Dick,' he answered quickly, 'if it's so awfully difficult, don't you think it 'ud be better for me to go over it with you first—just a running construe—and then I'd get a clearer idea of what the chap was driving at from the very beginning?'
'Certainly not,' Dick answered gravely, with a little concern in his voice, for he saw in this clever plea somewhat too strong an echo of Mr. Plan-tagenet's own fatal plausibility. 'You should spell it out first as well as you can by yourself; and then, when you've made out all you're able to with grammar and dictionary, you should come to me in the last resort to help you. Now sit down to it, there's a good boy. I shan't be able in future to help you quite as much in your work as I've been used to do.'
He spoke with a seriousness that was above his years. To say the truth, Mr. Plantagenet's habits had almost reversed their relative places in the family. Dick was naturally conscientious, having fortunately inherited his moral characteristics rather from his mother's side than from his father's; and being thrown early into the position of assistant bread-winner and chief adviser to the family, he had grown grave before his time, and felt the weight of domestic cares already heavy upon his shoulders. As for Clarence, who had answered his father with scant respect, he never thought for a moment of disobeying the wishes of his elder brother. He took up the dog-eared Thucydides that had served them both in turn, and the old Liddell and Scott that was still common property, and began conning over the chapter set before him with conspicuous diligence. Dick looked on meanwhile with no little satisfaction, while Eleanor went on with her work, in her chair in the corner, vaguely conscious all the time of meriting his approbation.
At last, just as they sat down to their frugal supper of bread and cheese and water—for by Dick's desire they were all, save one, teetotalers—Dick sprang a mine upon the assembled company by saying out all at once in a most matter-of-fact voice to his neighbour Clarry:
'No, I shan't be able to help you very much in future, I'm afraid—because, next week, I'm going up to Oxford—to try for a scholarship.'
A profound spell of awed silence followed this abrupt disclosure of a long-formed plan. Mr. Plantagenet himself was the first to break it. He rose to the occasion.
'Well, I'm glad at least, my son,' he said, in his most grandiose manner, 'you propose to give yourself the education of a gentleman.'