“There is always the multiplication-table,” replied Mr Carnaby. “The young gentleman is partial to that, I fancy.”
Hugh reddened, and applied himself to his bread and milk.
“Never mind a joke,” whispered Mrs Watson. “We won’t plague you with the multiplication-table the first evening. I will find you a book or something. Meantime, there is a companion for you—I forgot that.”
The good lady went down the room, and brought back a boy who seemed to be doing all he could to stop crying. He dashed his hand over his eyes every minute, and could not look anybody in the face. He had finished his supper, and was at a loss what to do next, as he had only arrived that morning, and did not know anybody at Crofton. His name was Tom Holt, and he was ten years old.
When they had told their names and ages, and where they came from, the boys did not know what to say next; and Hugh wished Phil would stop murmuring over his Sallust and looking in the dictionary every minute; but Mrs Watson did not forget the strangers. She brought them Cook’s Voyages out of the library, to amuse themselves with, on condition of their delivering the book to Mr Carnaby at bedtime.
The rest of the evening passed away very pleasantly. Hugh told Holt a great deal about Broadstairs and the South Sea Islands, and confided to him his own hopes of being a sailor, and going round the world; and, if possible, making his way straight through China,—the most difficult country left to travel in, he believed, except some parts of Africa. He did not want to cross the Great Desert, on account of the heat. He knew something of what that was by the leads at home, when the sun was on them. What was the greatest heat Holt had ever felt? Then came the surprise. Holt had last come from his uncle’s farm; but he was born in India, and had lived there till eighteen months ago. So, while Hugh had chattered away about the sea at Broadstairs, and the heat on the leads at home, his companion had come fourteen thousand miles over the ocean, and had felt a heat nearly as extreme as that of the Great Desert! Holt was very unassuming too. He talked of the heat of gleaning in his uncle’s harvest-fields, and of the kitchen when the harvest-supper was cooking; owning that he remembered he had felt hotter in India. Hugh heaped questions upon him about his native country and the voyage; and Holt liked to be asked: so that the boys were not at all like strangers just met for the first time. They raised their voices in the eagerness of their talk, from a whisper so as to be heard quite across the table, above the hum and buzz of above thirty others, who were learning their lessons half-aloud. At last Hugh was startled by hearing the words “Prater,” “Prater the second.” He was silent instantly, to Holt’s great wonder.
Without raising his eyes from his book, Phil said, so as to be heard as far as the usher,—
“Who prated, of Prater the second? Who is Prater the third?”
There was a laugh which provoked the usher to come and see whereabouts in Sallust such a passage as this was to be found. Not finding any such, he knuckled Phil’s head, and pulled his hair, till Hugh cried out—
“O, don’t, sir! Don’t hurt him so!”