“No, I don’t—certainly not!”—snapped out his mother. “Robert Burns was a very disreputable person. People who write poetry usually are. I didn’t ask you who Robert Burns was. I asked you who your friend Alister’s father was.”
“Colonel McDonald,” answered Boy,—“of the Gordon Highlanders.”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir “looked up” his regiment at once, and found that Colonel McDonald was a very distinguished person indeed—quite good blood, in fact—really quite. Whereupon she graciously approved of Alister as Boy’s friend; and Boy, emboldened by this, said,—
“Couldn’t I go to school where Alister is, mother? I do want to go to school!”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir asked the name of the school, and when she heard it, pursed her lips together dubiously. It was a famous school, and an expensive one. It boasted of some of the finest teachers in England, whose services were not to be had for nothing.
“I’ll see about it,” she said grandiloquently,—“I’m not sure I should approve of that school. But of course you must go to school somewhere—and I’ll arrange it for you as soon as I can.”
Having put the idea into her head, Boy waited with tolerable equanimity. He would write, he thought, to Miss Letty when everything was settled. In the meantime his mother, in her own peculiar pig-headed way, set to work reading all the advertisements of cheap schools in all the papers, and hit upon one at last that particularly seemed to appeal to her,—one which provided knowledge with physical and moral training for life generally, at the humble cost of about twenty pounds—board and lodging were included—a year. That would do, she resolved. An exchange of letters between herself and the proprietor of this “first-class educational establishment” soon settled the matter—“for,” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, “there is no occasion to consult Jim. He is too sodden with whisky to know what he is about—he will have to pay the money,—and I shall have to get it out of him, and—and that’s all.”
And one morning she informed Boy of his approaching destination.
“I have managed a school for you, Boy,” she said. “I’m getting your clothes ready, and next week you are going to France.”
“France!” cried Boy, and his little heart sank almost into his little boots.