“Well, my dear, what is it?” she said to her husband, accompanying the inquiry with a little motion, like a miniature beckoning, of her fore-finger.
“Something about the Times—the tutor,” he began.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Kincton Knox, interrupting, with a warning nod and an awful look, and a glance at Master Howard, who was fortunately so busy in tying bits of paper, in imitation of a kite-tail, on the string of the window-blind, that he had heard nothing.
“Oh!” murmured Mr. Kincton Knox, prolonging the interjection softly—he was accustomed, with a guilty and abject submission, every now and then, to receive that sort of awful signal—“I did not know.” And he whistled a little through his round mouth, and looked a little frightened, and ashamed of his clumsiness, though he seldom knew in what exactly the danger consisted.
“Howard, my precious rosebud, I’ve told Rogers he may fire the pistol for you three times this morning; he says he has powder, and you may go now.”
So away ran Master Howard to plague Rogers the footman; and Mrs. Kincton Knox said with a nod,—
“Now.”
“Here,” said he mildly, pushing the letter towards her, “you’ll understand it better;” and she read aloud—
“My dear Sir,—I venture to renew an old acquaintance at the instance of a young friend of mine, who has seen your advertisement in the Times for a tutor, and desires to accept that office. He is capitally qualified, as your advertisement says, ‘to prepare a boy of twelve for school.’ He is a fair scholar, and a gentleman, and for his character, I can undertake to answer almost as for my own. I feel pretty certain that you will like him. There is but one condition, to which I am sure you will not object.”
“He shan’t smoke or sit up all night, if that’s it,” said the lady loftily, by way of gloss.