Daniel looked cheerful on hearing this, and decided that advice without physic could not be very costly. He was grievously undeceived when he found that the advice of this doctor would cost a guinea, whereas the Grimblethorpe medical man only charged half-a-crown for a visit, and a bottle of medicine into the bargain.
"What your son wants is something to think about, work for mind as well as body, and young companions to work amongst. Give him change of scene, plenty of books, good teachers, bright companions, and you will save him. Here he will die, or lose his reason."
The doctor was a friend of Mr. Mitcheson's, and therefore to be trusted, and as the result of the combined advice of lawyer and doctor, Mark went to Claybury, and stayed there from Monday to Saturday in each week, whilst his father trod the old rut with only his wife to bear him company, and both sorely missing their boy's presence.
At first, Daniel Walthew had many misgivings as to the wisdom of the plan to which he had been brought to consent. Mark's feet had not taken kindly to the path which sufficed for his father, though he had never complained of it. But a new interest was created by the lad's very absence. He was terribly missed during the week; but how delightful it was to welcome him back on Saturdays, and to hear all he had to tell! So thought the mother.
But whilst Daniel rejoiced to see the hue of health coming back to his son's cheeks, and to hear the new glad ring in his voice, he was not so ready to listen, because with every week's work the lad's store of knowledge was increasing. He was getting new-fangled notions, and Grimblethorpe, which had been and still was his father's world, would never satisfy him when school days were over. "What next?" Daniel asked himself. But he was afraid to suggest an answer to the question.
Besides the wider school world, and world of books to which Mark had access now, there was another charmed circle into which he entered with bated breath. Mrs. Mitcheson did not forget the talk between her husband and herself about brightening the life of the solitary lad. She questioned her own sons about him. "How do you like young Walthew?" she asked.
"Oh, mother, he is most amusing," said Allan. "I do not mean in his talk, but he has such prim, quiet ways for a boy. He is going to be a model good boy, and as such most objectionable. He never blots his exercise-books, or leaves anything out of place, or tears a leaf, or speaks at a wrong time. He is hatefully goody-goody."
"You are too hard on him, Allan," interposed Fred, who was sixteen, and a couple of years his brother's senior. "You know how Mark has been brought up, mother, in such old-fashioned un-boylike ways—they are very good ways all the same. If I were half as careful and methodical, I should save myself many a lecture. But Mark is very clever, and his parents will be very proud of him one of these days. He is a year and a half younger than I am, but I shall have to work hard to hold my own against Mark."
"I wonder if Mr. Walthew really will be proud of the result of his son's school work. It is certain to interfere with his pet plan of tying the lad down to the same kind of life that he leads himself."
"Why, mother, Mr. Walthew could never expect Mark to go back to the old life at Grimblethorpe. To dig and delve, to sow and reap on that little holding, where two or three generations of miserly Walthews have gone on scraping and hoarding farthings, until they are as rich as —"