‘Then I shall go and see Lady Exmoor this very morning about it. It’s exactly the right place for Ernest. A little good society will get rid of all his nonsensical notions in a month or two. He’s lived too exclusively among his radical set at Oxford. And then it’ll be such a capital thing for him to be in the house continually with Hilda; she’s a girl of such excellent tone. I fancy—I’m not quite sure, but I fancy—that Ernest has a decided taste for the company of people, and even of young girls, who are not in Society. He’s so fond of that young man Oswald, who Herbert tells me is positively the son of a grocer—yes, I’m sure he said a grocer!—and it seems, from what Herbert writes me, that this Oswald has brought a sister of his up this term from behind the counter, on purpose to set her cap at Ernest. Now you boys have, unfortunately, no sisters, and therefore you haven’t seen as much of girls of a good stamp—not daily and domestically I mean—as is desirable for you, from the point of view of Society. But if Ernest can only be induced to take this tutorship at the Exmoors’, he’ll have an opportunity of meeting daily with a really nice girl, like Hilda; and though of course it isn’t likely that Hilda would take a fancy to her brother’s tutor—the Exmoors are such VERY conservative people in matters of rank and wealth and family and so forth—quite un-Christianly so, I consider—yet it can’t fail to improve Ernest’s tone a great deal, and raise his standard of female society generally. It’s really a very distressing thought to me, Ronald, that all my boys, except dear Herbert, should show such a marked preference for low and vulgar companionship. It seems to me, you both positively prefer as far as possible the society of your natural inferiors. There’s Ernest must go and take up with the friendship of that snuffy old German Socialist glass-cutter; while you are always running after your Plymouth Brethren and your Bible Christians, and your other ignorant fanatical people, instead of going with me respectably to St. Alphege’s to hear the dear Archdeacon! It’s very discouraging to a mother, really, very discouraging.’
CHAPTER VI. — DOWN THE RIVER.
‘Berkeley couldn’t come to-day, Le Breton: it’s Thursday, of course: I forgot about it altogether,’ Oswald said, on the barge at Salter’s. ‘You know he pays a mysterious flying visit to town every Thursday afternoon—to see an imprisoned lady-love, I always tell him.’
‘It’s very late in the season for taking ladies on the water, Miss Oswald,’ said Ernest, putting his oar into the rowlock, and secretly congratulating himself on the deliverance; ‘but better go now than not see Iffley church and Nuneham woods at all. You ought to have come up in summer term, and let us have the pleasure of showing you over the place when it was in its full leafy glory. May’s decidedly the time to see Oxford to the greatest advantage.’
‘So Harry tells me, and he wanted me to come up then, but it wasn’t convenient for them at home to spare me just at that moment, so I was obliged to put it off till late in the autumn. I have to help my mother a good deal in the house, you know, and I can’t always go dancing about the world whenever I should like to. Which string must I pull, Harry, to make her turn into the middle of the river? She always seems to twist round the exact way I don’t want her to.’
‘Right, right, hard right,’ cried Harry from the bow—they were in a tub pair bound down the river for Iffley. ‘Keep to the Oxfordshire shore as far as the willows; then cross over to the Berkshire. Le Breton’ll tell you when and where to change sides; he knows the river as well as I do.’
‘That’ll do splendidly for the present,’ Ernest said, looking ahead over his shoulder. ‘Mind the flags there; don’t go too near the corner. You certainly ought to see these meadows in early spring, when the fritillaries are all out over the spongy places, Miss Oswald. Has your brother ever sent you any of the fritillaries?’
‘What? snake-heads? Oh, boxes full of them. They’re lovely flowers, but not lovelier than our own Devonshire daffodils. You should see a Devonshire water-meadow in April! Why don’t you come down some time to Calcombe Pomeroy? It’s the dearest little peaceful seaside corner in all England.’