Still, old Stokes did not like it, and complained to the squire, who remonstrated with the vicar, and the latter in his turn lectured Teddy—the matter ending there as far as he was concerned, although the squeals of the afflicted sow were treasured up and remembered against him in the chronicles of Endleigh.
The place was so dull, that having nothing particular to keep him occupied—for he had long since learned all the village schoolmaster could teach him, and it was a mere farce his remaining any longer under his tutelage—the wonder was, not that Teddy got into any mischief at all, but that he did not fall into more; and Doctor Jolly was continually speaking to his father about neglecting him in that way, urging that he should be sent to some good boarding-school at a distance to prepare him for the university, Mr Vernon intending that the boy should follow in his own footsteps and go into the church, having the same living after him that he had inherited from his father.
But the vicar would not hear of this.
“No,” said he, “he shall stop here and be educated by me in the same way as I was educated by my poor father before going to Oxford. He’s a bright intelligent boy—you don’t think him an ignoramus, Jolly, eh?”
“Not by any means, by Jove,” laughed the doctor. “He knows too much already. What I think he wants is a little proper restraint and control. Master Teddy has too much his own way.”
“Ah! I can’t be hard with him, Jolly,” sighed the vicar. “Whenever I try to speak to him with severity he looks me in the face with those blue eyes of his, and I think of my poor wife, his mother. He’s the very image of her, Jolly!”
“Well, well,” said the doctor, putting the subject away, considering it useless to press the point; “I’m afraid you’ll regret it some day, though I hope not.”
“I hope not, indeed,” replied the vicar warmly. “Teddy isn’t a bad boy. He has never told me a falsehood in his life, and always confesses to any fault he has committed.”
“That doesn’t keep him out of mischief though,” said the doctor grimly as he went off, atoning to himself for having found fault with Teddy by giving him a drive out to the squire’s, and allowing him to take his horse and gig back by himself, an indulgence that lifted Teddy into the seventh heaven of delight.
However, as events turned out, the very means by which the doctor thought to clear the reproach from his own soul of having advised the vicar about Teddy, indirectly led to his advice being followed.