“This, sir, to a minister of the Word!” bawls out Ward, starting up, and who knew perfectly well the lads' skill in fence, having a score of times been foiled by the pair of them.
“You are not a clergyman yet. We thought you might like to be considered as a gentleman. We did not know.”
“A gentleman! I am a Christian, sir!” says Ward, glaring furiously, and clenching his great fists.
“Well, well, if you won't fight, why don't you forgive?” says Harry. “If you don't forgive, why don't you fight? That's what I call the horns of a dilemma;” and he laughed his frank, jolly laugh.
But this was nothing to the laugh a few days afterwards, when, the quarrel having been patched up, along with poor Mr. Ward's eye, the unlucky tutor was holding forth according to his custom. He tried to preach the boys into respect for him, to reawaken the enthusiasm which the congregation had felt for him; he wrestled with their manifest indifference, he implored Heaven to warm their cold hearts again, and to lift up those who were falling back. All was in vain. The widow wept no more at his harangues, was no longer excited by his loudest tropes and similes, nor appeared to be much frightened by the very hottest menaces with which he peppered his discourse. Nay, she pleaded headache, and would absent herself of an evening, on which occasion the remainder of the little congregation was very cold indeed. One day, then, Ward, still making desperate efforts to get back his despised authority, was preaching on the beauty of subordination, the present lax spirit of the age, and the necessity of obeying our spiritual and temporal rulers. “For why, my dear friends,” he nobly asked (he was in the habit of asking immensely dull questions, and straightway answering them with corresponding platitudes), “why are governors appointed, but that we should be governed? Why are tutors engaged, but that children should be taught?” (here a look at the boys). “Why are rulers——” Here he paused, looking with a sad, puzzled face at the young gentlemen. He saw in their countenances the double meaning of the unlucky word he had uttered, and stammered, and thumped the table with his fist. “Why, I say, are rulers——”
“Rulers,” says George, looking at Harry.
“Rulers!” says Hal, putting his hand to his eye, where the poor tutor still bore marks of the late scuffle. Rulers, o-ho! It was too much. The boys burst out in an explosion of laughter. Mrs. Mountain, who was full of fun, could not help joining in the chorus; and little Fanny, who had always behaved very demurely and silently at these ceremonies, crowed again, and clapped her little hands at the others laughing, not in the least knowing the reason why.
This could not be borne. Ward shut down the book before him; in a few angry, but eloquent and manly words, said he would speak no more in that place; and left Castlewood not in the least regretted by Madam Esmond, who had doted on him three months before.