“No, I should think not, but I have not been weighed lately,” replied Crawley. “You are very kind, I am sure, but does your father know? Perhaps he has made arrangements to fill his house.”
“Oh no! it is all right. My father does not bother his head about such things; he is perpetually going to London, and thinking of business. But my mother and sisters want you to come, and have told me to ask you.”
“I am much obliged to them, they are very good. And I should like it very much,” said Crawley, somewhat more hesitatingly than it was his wont to speak.
For this invitation was rather a hot coal on his head. Gould had courted his acquaintance and he had rather snubbed him, not liking him particularly. He was rich, which mattered to nobody, but he gave himself airs on the strength of it, and that did. There are few things more irritating than to hear anyone perpetually bragging of his money, and if you happen to be poor yourself I do not think that it helps you to sit and listen more patiently. And then Gould was an injudicious flatterer; he made the flattered fellow uncomfortable. It is a nice thing, flattery, and causes one to feel good all over, if it is delicately applied with a camel’s-hair brush, as it were. But Gould laid it on with a trowel. He only courted success; if anyone were down he would be the first to spurn him.
Now, Crawley was undoubtedly the boy held in greatest estimation in the school: captain and treasurer of the cricket and football clubs, good-looking, pleasant in manners, open, generous, clever at lessons, he was a special favourite with masters and boys, and therefore Gould burnt his incense before him. For to be Crawley’s chum was to gain a certain amount of consideration in the school, and Gould did not mind shining with a reflected light. He was not like Saurin in that respect, whose egotism saved him at least from being a toad-eater. Gould was vain enough, but his vanity was of a different kind. But hitherto all his efforts had been in vain, and Crawley had rather snubbed him. This had not prevented Gould from talking about him, exaggerating his merits, and bragging about his intimacy with him at home. It was always “my friend Crawley and I” did this, that, and the other. So that Mrs Gould wrote to him one day asking whether he would not like his inseparable to come and stay with him during the holidays; and Clarissa Gould added a postscript to the effect that as he was so clever he would be of great use to them in their private theatricals.
Crawley was one boy amongst a rather large family of girls; the father was dead, and the mother, though able to live in ordinary comfort, was far from rich. She could not indulge in carriages and horses, or men-servants, for example, and she lived near London for the sake of her daughters’ education. So that Crawley had never had an opportunity of gaining proficiency in those sports which cannot be indulged in without a good deal of expenditure, and he looked upon hunting and shooting as sublime delights far out of his reach at present, though perhaps he might attain to them by working very hard, some day. His ambition was to enter the army, not that he thought drill any particular fun, or desired the destruction of his fellow-creatures, or ever indulged in dreams of medals, bars, triumphal arches, and the thanks of parliament, but simply because he might get to India, stick pigs, and shoot tigers. Shooting! hunting! Gould’s words made his nerves tingle from head to foot with excitement. And he had thought the fellow who now offered him a taste of such pleasures a muff, a bore, a sycophant, and done his best to avoid him! How wrong it is to have prejudices!
“Well, then, when will you come?” asked Gould.
“As soon as it is convenient to have me after Christmas,” replied Crawley. “I must spend the Christmas week at home, you know; but then I am free. I should tell you, though, that I cannot shoot or ride a little bit. I have never had any practice, and you will find me an awful duffer.”
“All right; fellows always say that.”
“Yes, I know they do sometimes, in mock modesty. But in my case it’s a fact, and I warn you, that I may not spoil your fun.”