“No, we haven’t missed anything, Mr Reader,” replied the curate, “but we expect to miss somebody—George, and that is the reason of our visit.”
And then the curate explained what the business was, and one of the churchwardens made a speech (the composition of which had kept him awake all the previous night), and then I was produced and handed over. And George blushed and stammered out something which nobody could understand, and George’s mother began to cry, and George’s father, unable otherwise to express his sense of the occasion, began to whistle. And so the little business was satisfactorily concluded, and the deputation withdrew, leaving me in the pocket of a new master. Three days afterwards both of us took our departure for Cambridge.
Chapter Twenty.
How my new master made trial of a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.
But now let us follow Reader. My master’s rooms at Saint George’s College were of the poorest and meanest description; in fact it would not be too much to describe them—the bedroom and study—as being like a pair of big cupboards under a great staircase. They looked out on nothing more picturesque than a blank wall. They were carpeted with nothing better than an old drugget; and as for paper, the place would have looked better simply whitewashed. They were suffocating in summer and draughty in winter, and at nights afforded rendezvous to a whole colony of rats. Every step on the staircase above thundered down into the study; the loosely-hung windows rattled even in a light breeze, and the flavours of the college dustbins, hard by, appeared to have selected these chambers, above all others, for their favourite haunt. I am told Saint George’s College has recently undergone renovation. It so, it is probable “the Mouse-trap”—for this was the designation by which George Reader’s classical domain was familiarly styled—has disappeared. Let us hope so, for a more miserable, uncomfortable, and uninviting couple of rooms I never saw.
But they had one merit, and that a great one: they were cheap, which to George Reader meant everything. He had gained a small entrance scholarship, by the help of which he hoped, with the most rigid economy, to support himself during his college career. Most other young fellows would have shrunk from the prospect, but such was my master’s ambition that I believe he would have endured life in a stable if only he could have there enjoyed the advantages and encouragements of a college course.
It was, at any rate, a fine sight to see him settle down in his new dispiriting quarters, determined to make the best of everything, and suffer nothing to damp his ardour for work. He unpacked his few precious books and laid them on the shelf; he hung up the likenesses of his father and mother over the chimney-piece; he produced the cheese which the latter had insisted on his bringing with him, and, as a crowning-effect, set me up on the mantel-shelf with as much pride as if I had been a marble clock.
“That looks something like!” he said to himself. “Now for a little tea, and then—grind!”