“So I understand.”
“Poor fellow! his wife died quite young. His three children will be quite grown up now, poor things. Well, thank you very much, Mr Armstrong. I hope we shall always be good friends for dear Roger’s sake. Good-bye.”
Roger, as may be imagined, had not waited a whole week before ascertaining his tutor’s intentions.
He had been a good deal staggered at first by his father’s will, with its curious provisions; but, amongst a great deal that was perplexing and disappointing in it, he derived no little comfort from the fact that Mr Armstrong was to be one of his legal protectors.
“I don’t see, you know,” said he, as he lounged against his tutor’s mantelpiece one evening. “I don’t see why a fellow of nineteen can’t be trusted to behave himself without being tied up in this way. It’s my impression I know as well how to behave now as I am likely to do when I am twenty-one.”
“That is a reflection in advance on my dealings with you during the next two years,” said the tutor with a grin, as he swung himself half round on the piano-stool so as to get his hand within reach of the keys.
“I don’t mind you,” said the boy, “but I hope this Cousin Edward, or whoever he is, won’t try to ‘deal’ with me too.”
“I am informed he is virtue and amiability itself,” said the tutor.
“If he is, all serene. I’ll take my walks abroad with one little hand in yours, and the other in his, like a good boy. If he’s not, there’ll be a row, Armstrong. In anticipation of which I feel in the humour for a turn at the foils.”
So they adjourned into the big empty room dedicated to the manly sports of the man and his boy, and there for half an hour a mortal combat raged, at the end of which Roger pulled off his mask and said, panting—