“What did you mean by saying ‘No, thank you’ when she asked you if you’d like to come?” she demanded. “I believe she’d have taken you if you’d said yes.”
“I didn’t want her to,” explained Anthony. “She isn’t clever. I’d rather learn from someone clever.”
With improved financial outlook the Strong’nth’arms had entered the Church of England. When you were poor it didn’t matter; nobody minded what religion you belonged to; church or chapel, you crept into the free seats at the back and no one turned their eyes to look. But employers of labour who might even one day be gentlefolks! The question had to be considered from more points of view than one.
Mr. Strong’nth’arm’s people had always been chapel folk; and as his wife had often bitterly remarked, much good it had done him. Her own inclination was towards the established church as being more respectable; and arguing that the rent of a side pew was now within their means, she had gained her point. For himself Mr. Strong’nth’arm was indifferent. Hope had revived within him. He was busy on a new invention and Sunday was the only day now on which he had leisure and the workshop to himself. Anthony would have loved to have been there helping, but his mother explained to him that one had to think of the future. A little boy, spotlessly clean and neatly dressed, always to be seen at church with his mother, was the sort of little boy that people liked and, when the time came, were willing to help.
A case in point, proving the usefulness of the church, occurred over this very problem of Anthony’s education. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm called on the vicar and explained to him her trouble. The vicar saw a way out. One of the senior pupils at the grammar school was seeking evening employment. His mother, a widow, possessed of nothing but a small pension, had lately died. Unless he could earn sufficient to keep him he would have to discontinue his studies. A clever lad; the vicar could recommend him. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was gratitude personified. The vicar was only too pleased. It was helping two birds with one stone. It sounded wrong to the vicar even as he said it. But then so many things the vicar said sounded wrong to him afterwards.
The business was concluded that same evening. Mr. Emanuel Tetteridge became engaged for two hours a day to teach Anthony the rudiments of learning, and by Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was generally referred to as “our little Anthony’s tutor.” He was a nervous, silent youth. The walls of his bed-sitting-room, to which when the din of hammers in the workshop proved disturbing he would bear little Anthony away, was papered with texts and mottoes, prominent among which one read: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” The preparatory education of Anthony proceeded by leaps and bounds. The child was eager to learn.
Between the two an odd friendship grew up founded upon a mutual respect and admiration. Young Tetteridge was clever. The vicar had spoken more truly than he knew. He had a clever way of putting things that made them at once plain and easy to be remembered. He could make up poetry—quite clever poetry that sometimes made you laugh and at other times stirred something within you which you didn’t understand but which made you feel grand and all aglow. He drew pictures—clever pictures of fascinating never-to-be-seen things that almost frightened you, of funny faces, and things that made you cry. He made music out of a thing that looked like a fiddle, but was better than a fiddle, that he kept in a little black box; and when he played you wanted to dance and sing and shout.
But it was not the cleverness that Anthony envied. That would have been fatal to their friendship. He never could answer satisfactorily when Anthony would question him as to what he was going to be—what he was going to do with all his cleverness. He hadn’t made up his mind, he wasn’t quite sure. Sometimes he thought he would be a poet, at other times a musician or an artist, or go in for politics and be a statesman.
“Which are you going to begin with when you leave school?” demanded Anthony. They had been studying in young Tetteridge’s bed-sitting-room and the lesson was over. Anthony’s eyes were fixed upon a motto over the washstand:
“One thing at a time, and that done well,