“I want to find employment, sir, and the means of supporting myself. I don’t wish to be a burden on Farmer Rowe, the only friend I have beside Jane Hayes, my old nurse.”
Mr Fluke surveyed Owen from head to foot. “What can such a boy as you do, except run errands, or sweep out the office?” he asked in a tone of contempt. “What do you happen to know? Can you write? Have you any knowledge of arithmetic?”
“Yes, sir,” said Owen, “I am tolerably well acquainted with quadratic equations; I have gone through the first six books of Euclid, and have begun trigonometry, but have not got very far. I am pretty well up in Latin. I have read Caesar and Virgil, and a little of Horace; and in Greek, the New Testament, Xenophon, and two plays of Aeschylus; and my father considered me well acquainted with English history and geography.”
“Umph! a prodigy of learning!” muttered the old gentleman. “Can you do the rule of three and sum up?—that’s more to the purpose. What sort of fist do you write? Can you do as well as this?” and he exhibited a crabbed scrawl barely legible.
“I hope that my writing would be more easily read than that, sir,” answered Owen. “I could do the rule of three several years ago, and am pretty correct at summing up.”
“Umph!” repeated the old gentleman, “if I take you at your word, I must set you down as a genius. I don’t know that the learning you boast of will be of much use to you in the world. If, however, I find the account I have just heard correct, I may perhaps give you a trial. I am not to be taken in by impostors, old or young; you will understand, therefore, that I make no promises. I am busy now and cannot spend more time on you, so you must go. I suppose that you did not come up here by yourself?”
“No, sir, John Howe, Farmer Rowe’s eldest son, accompanied me, and is waiting outside; if you cannot give me employment, he wants me to go back with him to Fenside.”
“Tell him to stay in town until I have seen the book, and have had time to look into the matter,” said Mr Fluke. “Where are you stopping, in case I may wish to send to you? But I am not likely to do that. Come again when you have got the book.”
“We are stopping at the ‘Green Dragon,’ Bishopsgate Street, sir,” said Owen.
“Well, write down your address and the name of your friend,” and Simon Fluke handed a pen to Owen, and placed a piece of paper on the desk before him. “Umph! a clear hand, more like a man’s than a boy’s,” muttered the old gentlemen to himself as he examined what Owen had written. “You may go now, and remember what I told you.”