If mother had only lived it would have been different. Some of her kind grave words would have set everything straight. What could poor old Granny do beyond holding up her hands at him, with her favourite 'Dear, dear!' and then giving him a double share of dumpling at supper to cheer him up?
'Boys ought to like school, Cuthbert,' she told him.
'But you see I don't, Granny. I hate it.'
'But good boys are fond of their book. Look at Willie.'
'As if I should ever be like Will,' he answered, with a look as if he were proud of me.
'Master Caleb thinks all the world of our Willie,' Granny went on. 'Why, you might go a-walking out with him if you were good, like Willie does.'
Cuthbert made a wry face. 'I'd much sooner not, Granny, thank you.'
From the time I was a little child I had known Master Caleb Morton well—he came so often to the Castle. It was he who had told my mother all the stories she knew about the place. He loved it almost better than we did, and—we were very proud of that—he had written a book about it, a real printed book. He gave it to mother, and it stood on our book-shelf, between 'Pilgrim's Progress' and the 'History of Jack the Giant-killer'—a thin red book, with a woodcut of Wyncliffe Castle on the title page.
Cuthbert and I believed that a stone could scarcely fall from the crumbling walls without his finding it out. He used to stand for hours with his hands behind his back, gazing up at the grey towers.
Poor dear Master Caleb! He was much too good for us at Wyncliffe; for he was very clever, very learned, very hard-working, and understood everything under the sun, except village boys and girls.