"You have only to come to me," Mr. Henry reiterated to them; "I can read with a dozen of you just as well as I can with one. I have no wish surreptitiously to get Paradyne on; I would a great deal rather that you should all keep together, and enjoy the same advantages, one as the other; but if you will not come to me, and he does, the blame rests with you."
"Such a thing as coaching a fellow for the Orville prize was never heard of before, you know," retorted Brown major.
"I am not coaching him for the Orville prize. I am not coaching him at all, for the matter of that. He reads the classics with me, and I explain away his difficulties in mathematics. It is preparatory to the Oxford examination, not the Orville."
"The one implies the other," said the angry boys. And they spurned the assistance for themselves; which, metaphorically speaking, was like cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Talbot would have liked to continue, but could not fly in the teeth of popular prejudice.
"Perhaps I'd better give it up," said George Paradyne one day, throwing himself back in his chair at Mr. Henry's.
"Give what up?"
"Everything. What with the life at college and the life at home, I'm ready to—to—pitch the whole overboard," concluded Mr. George, having hesitated for an expression sufficiently strong to denote his feelings.
"You have only to bear up bravely against the one; you'll live it down in time——"
"Rather a prolonged time, it seems," put in George, who was quite unlike his own light-hearted self to-day.
"And for the other," continued Mr. Henry, ignoring the interruption, "you should bear it cheerfully, for you know it is born of love for you."