Hugh was about to ask his mother, again and again during their walk, why Mr Tooke let him go to Crofton before he was ten; but Mrs Proctor was grave and silent; and though she spoke kindly to him now and then, she did not seem disposed to talk. At last they were in the Temple Garden; and they sat down where there was no one to overhear them; and then Hugh looked up at his mother. She saw, and told him, what it was that he wanted to ask.
“It is on account of the little boys themselves,” said she, “that Mr Tooke does not wish to have them very young, now that there is no kind lady in the house who could be like a mother to them.”
“But there is Mrs Watson. Phil has told me a hundred things about Mrs Watson.”
“Mrs Watson is the housekeeper. She is careful, I know, about the boys’ health and comfort; but she has no time to attend to the younger ones, as Mrs Tooke did,—hearing their little troubles, and being a friend to them like their mothers at home.”
“There is Phil—”
“Yes. You will have Phil to look to. But neither Phil, nor any one else, can save you from some troubles you are likely to have from being the youngest.”
“Such as Mr Tooke told me his boy had;—being put on the top of a high wall, and plagued when he was tired: and all that. I don’t think I should much mind those things.”
“So we hope, and so we believe. Your fault is not cowardice—”
Mrs Proctor so seldom praised anybody that her words of esteem went a great way. Hugh first looked up at her, and then down on the grass,—his cheeks glowed so. She went on—
“You have faults,—faults which give your father and me great pain; and though you are not cowardly about being hurt in your body, you sadly want courage of a better kind,—courage to mend the weakness of your mind. You are so young that we are sorry for you, and mean to send you where the example of other boys may give you the resolution you want so much.”