"Send them both to Harrow, and trust the rest to Providence."
And after a brooding silence, punctuated with more than one thoughtful pinch, "We will try Harrow, anyway," said the oracle, and Eager shook hands with him and went downstairs well satisfied.
[CHAPTER XXII]
WHERE'S JACK?
With all diffidence I mention a fact. Whether it had any bearing on a later happening I do not know. Mr. Kennet, as we know, indulged occasionally in strong waters. The result, as a rule, was only an increased surliness of demeanour of which no one took much notice.
On one such occasion, however, shortly after Jim's return, Kennet, trespassing on Mrs. Lee's domain on some message of his master's, got to words with the old lady, and, rankling perhaps under some sharper reproof than usual from above, snarled at her like a toothless old dog:
"Old witch! foisting your ill-gotten brat on us by kidnapping t'other!" At which Mrs. Lee snatched at her broom, and Mr. Kennet beat a retreat more hasty than dignified.
Mr. Eager did his utmost during these last months of the year to prepare the boys for their approaching translation.
"It's my old school, boys. See you do me credit there," he would urge on them. "In the games you'll do all right. Just pick up their ways, and never lose your tempers. You'll find the lessons tough at first, but I shall trust to you to do your best. You'll miss the flats and the sand-hills, of course, but you'll soon find compensations in the playing-fields."
They came to look forward with something like eagerness to the new prospect. It would be a tremendous change in their lives, and the call of the unknown works in the blood of the young like the spring.