Paul was fond of his sister, and had always looked up to her as one of superior knowledge to himself.
“I’ll tell you all you want to know, as soon as I can,” he wrote to Amy on the Monday. “But why are you so inquisitive?”
There are thousands of brothers and sisters without affection for each other. We say of So-and-so, “I loved him as if he were my brother;” or, “Mary So-and-so—if she had been my own sister, I could not have felt more regard for her.” It is flattering to our humanity that these illustrations of regard and affection should be in use. Nine families out of ten quarrel amongst themselves, and brothers and sisters are the deadliest enemies of brothers and sisters, thwarting each other in childhood and at maturity, stepping in each other’s way, disgracing each other, and making the very name they mutually bear hateful to both. Happy, indeed, are brothers and sisters who really and truly love each other; for there is not a holier, not a more beautiful passion.
Paul Somerton would have done anything in the world for Amy. He remembered so many hours made happy by her love and foresight. They had nearly broken their hearts over parting when he went to school; and Amy had quite a box-full of his boyish letters, carefully preserved. She thought there was the making of a great man in Paul; he was like his father in temper and disposition—frank and outspoken, a hater of shams.
At first when Amy had written to him about the doings of Mr. Tallant, and concerning Mr. Hammerton, Paul had scruples about his duty in the matter; but it was sufficient for Paul that Amy assured him that she had a proper and sufficient object in learning what she sought; and Paul determined that Amy should soon know all she desired.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TWO FRIENDS AND THE TWO VIGNETTES.
A fine old Norman cathedral, by the side of a famous river—the one celebrated in history, the other a favourite with poets so long ago as Spenser.
The great grey cathedral, with its high pitched towers, and its crumbling walls, threw big dark shadows on the green turf of the college close, where half-a-dozen comfortable houses formed two sides of a square. In the centre grew a clump of venerable elms, the home of a colony of crows which were everlastingly calling to each other from above.
The other two sides of the square were filled in by the cathedral’s grey walls, and an old gateway.
The river flowed on without—the famous river with its sedgy banks. It flowed on outside the monastic-like square, noiselessly mostly, bearing lazy barges on its big brown bosom towards the sea. When the floods came down from the west it roared and whirled along in curls and eddies, the colour of coffee, like Kingsley’s salmon river in the “Water Babies.”