“Yes, France!” said his mother. “There’s a charming school at a place called Noirville in Brittany, and I have arranged for you to go there. You’ll learn to speak French, which is always a great advantage to a boy. Why, what are you crying about?”
Poor Boy! He tried hard to keep back his tears, but it was no use—and the more he fought against them, the faster they fell.
“Oh, mother, mother!” he said, at last giving way to his sobs, “I did want to be a real English boy!—a real, real English boy!”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir’s little eyes almost shot out of her head in the extremity of her staring astonishment.
“What a ridiculous child you are!” she burst out at last. “How can you be anything else than a real English boy? Isn’t your father English? Am not I—your mother—English? And were you not born in England? Good gracious me! I never heard such nonsense in my life! Silly cry-baby! Do you think going to school in France will alter your birth and your nature?”
Boy choked back his sobs, and controlled his tears,—but not trusting himself to speak, he went straight out of his mother’s presence, and ran as hard as his little legs could carry him down to the sea-shore. There he sat, a forlorn little figure, on the sand close to the fringe of the sea, and tried to think. It was a difficult task, for he was too young to analyse his own emotions. His hazy idea that he could not possibly be ‘a real English boy’ if he went to school in France was purely instinctive—he knew nothing about foreign countries or foreign customs of education. But he was hopelessly, bitterly disappointed,—deplorably, cruelly cast down. He knew it would be no use appealing to his mother. And he did not know where his father was. Even if he had known, he could have done nothing with that estimable parent. It seemed very useless to try and do one’s best, he thought. Since he had come back from Scotland he had been so thoroughly determined to follow Miss Letty’s precepts—to attempt by small degrees the work of becoming ‘a good brave man,’ that he had avoided all the dirty little scavenger-boys of the place he had used to foregather with, and he had not even been to see Rattling Jack. He had remained nearly all day with his mother, doing the lessons she gave him to do, and obeying her in every trifling particular, and had been most gently docile and affectionate in his conduct. The silly woman, however, had taken all his loving attention as a proof that he had found Miss Leslie so ‘faddy,’ and her house in Scotland so dull, that he was glad and grateful to be at home again with ‘his own dear mother,’ as she herself put it. And now—— she was going to send him away to France! His wistful eyes scanned the ocean and the far blue line of the distant horizon,—there was a storm coming up from the north, and the first gusts of wind ruffled the waves and gave them white crests, over which three or four seagulls flew with doleful screams, and Boy’s heart grew heavier and heavier. Presently he got up from the sand, dusting his little clothes free from the sparkling grains.
“It’s no use,” he said hopelessly,—“it isn’t a bit of use! I shall never be anything—neither a soldier nor a sailor, nor anybody. But I’ll write to Miss Letty.”
He had begun to retrace his steps homeward, when he saw a figure coming along the stretches of sand,—a figure that stooped and shuffled, and carried a basket on its back. Boy recognized it as the visible form and composition of Rattling Jack, and went straight up to it.
“Hullo, Jack!” said he with a little smile.
The old gentleman turned his bent head round on one side.