“Why, Hugh! Hush!” cried Jane.
“He did,—he said exactly that. But he meant, Miss Harold, that I am to be a Crofton boy,—directly, next month.”
“Then have we done with one another, Hugh?” asked Miss Harold, gently. “Will you not learn any more from me?”
“That is for your choice, Miss Harold,” observed Mrs Proctor. “Hugh has not deserved the pains you have taken with him: and if you decline more trouble with him now he is going into other hands, no one can wonder.”
Miss Harold feared that he was but poorly prepared for school, and was quite ready to help him, if he would give his mind to the effort. She thought that play, or reading books that he liked, was less waste of time than his common way of doing his lessons; but if he was disposed really to work, with the expectation of Crofton before him, she was ready to do her best to prepare him for the real hard work he would have to do there. His mother proposed that he should have time to consider whether he would have a month’s holiday or a month’s work, before leaving home. She had to go out this morning. He might go with her, if he liked; and as they returned, they would sit down in the Temple Garden, and she would tell him all about the plan.
Hugh liked this beginning of his new prospects. He ran to be made neat for his walk with his mother. He knew he must have the wet curl on his forehead twice over to day, but he comforted himself with hoping that there would be no time at Crofton for him to be kept standing, to have his hair done so particularly, and to be scolded all the while, and then kissed, like a baby, at the end.