Indeed, the fare is plain enough, as you will presently discover when you are seated at Master More’s right hand at the long table in the great hall. But dainty though you be at your sizes, on ordinary occasions, it will be odds if you have ever set down to a meal more to your taste, or eaten anything with a greater appetite than the salt meat, and coarse fish, and thick slices from the cob-loaf, flavoured, as these are, with the “Attic Salt,” for which this house is famous.
After supper someone will suggest a stroll through the garden; and you will accept the more readily since you hear Dame Alice say that Gillian needs her superintendence in the kitchen. As you rise from table your eye, through the long, wide lattice, catches a glimpse of glowing flower-beds and blossoming hedges, and you compliment your host on the beautiful home he has made for himself. Is it fancy, or does a slight shadow really fall on his laughing face, as if he felt in how short a time he must bid it all good-bye?
It would seem as if Margaret noticed the little cloud also, and her homely, clever face, so like her father’s in colouring and feature and expression, reflects it lovingly. But she knows how to conjure away his sadness. “Shall we not go to the Academia first, and show you to what good use we have put the day?” she asks him, laying her hand on his arm and turning her dear face up to his.
“Well proposed, Meg,” he says, tucking her arm under his own, and so leading the way up the broad oak stairs—you following among the others.
“How charming!” is your first exclamation as you enter the schoolroom. And, indeed, you are right. No more delightful room can be imagined than this panelled-oak chamber, with deep, low, roomy window-seats, and classic tapestry, flapping in the cool breeze from the river. After you have spoken a word with Master Gunnel, the tutor (whom you have noticed slip away early from the supper table, and find again here with young John Clement, with a Greek text between them) you will be conducted to the various desks, and shown their contents by their several owners. On Bessy’s you will find a “Livy” most probably, on Daisy Middleton’s a “Sallust,” and on Margaret’s a “Saint Augustine,” with her father’s marks “where she is to read and where desist.” Then Master Gunnel will conduct you to his own high desk, and take therefrom some of their traductions, at the purity and elegance of which, if you have any skill in Latin style, you will be completely amazed.
Though you compliment Master Gunnel on the proficiency of his pupils you know, and he knows, that the credit is all due to their father. Even in his busiest years it has been his chief occupation. If you had time to go over the letters which Margaret treasures so dearly, and which you may see (tied up like a lover’s in blue ribbon) in a safe corner of her desk, you would find, not once, but many times repeated, words like these: “I beg you, Margaret, tell me about the progress you are all making in your studies. For I assure you that, rather than allow my children to be idle and slothful, I would make a sacrifice of wealth, and bid adieu to other cares and business, to attend to my children and my family, amongst whom none is more dear to me than yourself, my beloved daughter.”
“Jack! Jack! What has become of Jack?” Margaret looks around anxiously; but for once Jack is not in any particular mischief, and comes up to his father with a look of self-satisfaction at the fact, which is infinitely comical.
“Look,” says his father, “how the little monkey knows already that he is going to be praised for the Latin letter he sent me to Court by the hand of the Bristol merchant.”
He takes the little chap between his knees, and strokes his curls while he talks to them all. Indeed, each of them had done very well, and it was not only because he was their father and loved them dearly that their letters had given him such pleasure. Their letters were very good; the thought very well put; the Latin pure and correct. But John’s pleased him best of all, because it was longer, and showed that he had taken more trouble with it than the others had done. It was funny too, and some of his own jokes had been turned very wittily against himself; the which pleased him not a little. But even in this matter John had remembered not to go too far, and while he thrust and parried very prettily, he never forgot that he was fencing with his father.