This remark closed the conversation, and they came back to me. But I had overheard another sentence from Mr. Andrewes' lips, which filled me with disquiet,
"I know of one that will just suit you; a capital little fellow."
So the tutor was actually decided upon. "'A capital little fellow.' That means a nasty fussy little man!" I cried to myself. "I hate him!"
For the rest of that day, and all the next, I worried myself with thoughts of the new tutor. On the following morning, I was standing near one of the lodges with my father, looking at some silver pheasants, when Mr. Andrewes rode by, and called to my father.
Now, living as I did, chiefly with servants, and spending much more of my leisure than was at all desirable between the stables and the housekeeper's room, my sense of honour on certain subjects was not quite so delicate as it ought to have been. With all their many merits, uneducated people and servants have not—as a class—strict ideas on absolute truthfulness and honourable trustworthiness in all matters. A large part of the plans, hopes, fears, and quarrels of uneducated people are founded on what has been overheard by folk who were not intended to hear it, and on what has been told again by those to whom a matter was told in confidence. Nothing is a surer mark of good breeding and careful "upbringing" (as the Scotch call it) than delicacy on those little points which are trusted to one's honour. But refinement in such matters is easily blunted if one lives much with people who think any little meanness fair that is not found out. I really saw no harm in trying to overhear all that I could of the conversation between my father and Mr. Andrewes, though I was aware, from their manner, that I was not meant to hear it. I lingered near my father, therefore, and pretended to be watching the pheasants, for a certain instinct made me feel that I should not like my father to see me listening. He was one of those highly, scrupulously honourable gentlemen, before whose face it was impossible to do or say anything unworthy or mean.
He spoke in low tones, so that I lost most of what he said; but the parson's voice was a peculiarly clear one, and though he lowered it, I heard a good deal.
"I saw him yesterday," was Mr. Andrewes' first remark.
("That's the tutor," thought I.)
My father's answer I lost; but I caught fragments of Mr. Andrewes' next remarks, which were full of information on this important matter.
"Quite young, good-tempered—little boy so fond of him, nothing would have induced them to part with him; but they were going abroad."