Tom, Dick and Harry Part 9

"I'm glad you did. I'm longing to hear how you got on to-day."

"Oh, pretty well."

"Was it very hard work?"

"Not particularly."

"You'll soon be quite a man of business."

It occurred to me that if my business career was to be based on no better experience than that I had hitherto had in my guardian's office, I should not rank as a merchant prince in a hurry.

"Would you like me to go with you to Miss Bousfield's?"

"If you like, mother. But I can go alone all right." She was a brick.

She guessed what I hoped she would say, and she said it.

"Well, I'll be looking out for you at tea-time, dear boy," said she.

And she patted my arm lovingly as I started on.

I wished those fellows could have heard her voice and seen her kind face. _She_ treated me like a man--which was more than could be said for them.

I went on my way soothed in my ruffled spirits. But my perturbation revived when I stood on the doorstep of the Girls' High School, and rang the head mistress's bell. It was a bitter pill, I can tell you, for a fellow who had once been caned by Plummer for practising on the horizontal bar without the mattress underneath to fall on.

Miss Bousfield was a shrewd, not disagreeable-looking little body, who saved me all the trouble of self-introduction by knowing who I was and why I came.

"Well, Jones," said she--I liked that, I had dreaded she would call me Tommy--"here you are. How is your mother? Why, what a state your hair is in! I really think you'd like to go into the cloak room; you'll find a brush and comb there. It looks as if your hair were standing on end with horror at me, you know."

Little she knew what my hair was on end about. I was almost grateful to her for the way she put it, and meekly retired to the cloak room, where--I confess it--with a long-tailed girl's comb, and a soft brush, and a big looking-gla.s.s, I contrived to restore my truant locks to their former masculine order.

When I returned to the room. Miss Bousfield was sitting at a table, at which was also seated a young lady of about twenty, with an exercise book and dictionary in front of her.

Was it a trap? Was I to be taught along with the girls after all? Miss Bousfield evidently divined my perturbation and hastened to explain.

"Miss Steele, this is Master Jones, who is going to read Latin with us.

Miss Steele is one of my teachers, Jones, and we three are going to brush up our cla.s.sics together, you see."

Oh, all right. That wasn't so bad. I had no objection to a.s.sist Miss Steele, or Miss Bousfield, for the matter of that, in brushing-up their cla.s.sics, as long as the girls at large were kept out of the way.

I acknowledged Miss Steele's greeting in a patronising way, and then looked about for a chair. I wished Mr Evans and his lot could see how far removed I was from the common schoolgirl; here were two females actually going to pick my brains for their own good. If women must learn Latin at all, they could hardly do better than secure a public schoolboy to brush them up.

"Now, let us see," said Miss Bousfield, "how far we have all got. Miss Steele, you have read some Cicero, I know, already."

Cicero! That girl read Cicero, when I had barely begun Caesar! This was a crusher for me. How about the brushing-up now?

"And you, Jones, have you begun Cicero yet?"

"Well, no," I said, "not yet."

"Caesar, then; I think we shall both be ready to take that up again.

How far were you--or shall we begin at the beginning?"

"Better begin at the beginning," said I, anxious not to have to confess that I had not yet got through the first chapter.

But before we had gone many lines, Miss Bousfield, I could see, began to have her doubts about my syntax; and after a little conference about syntax, the question of verbs came up, unpleasantly for me; and after deciding we had a little brushing-up to do there, the conversation turned on declensions, a subject on which I had very little definite information to afford to these two females in distress.

I verily believe we should have come to exchanging views on the indefinite article itself, had not Miss Bousfield taken the bull by the horns, and said--

"I think the best thing, Jones, will be for us to a.s.sume we know nothing, to begin with, and start at the beginning. We shall easily get over the ground then, and it will be all the better to be sure of our footing. Let us take Exercise 1. in the grammar."

Miss Steele pouted a little, as if to indicate it was hardly worth her while, as a reader of Cicero, to waste her time over "a high tree," "a bad boy," "a beautiful table," and so on. But I felt sure the exercise would do her good, and was glad Miss Bousfield set her to it.

She irritated me by having it all written down in a twinkling, and going on with Cicero on her own account, while I plodded on up the "high tree"

and around the "beautiful table." I hoped Miss Bousfield would rebuke her for insubordination, but she did not, and I began to think much less of both ladies as the afternoon went on.

It did not add to my satisfaction to get my exercise back with fifteen corrections scored across it in bold red pencil--whereas Miss Steele's was not even looked at.

I thought of suggesting that it would be only fair that she and I should be treated alike, when Miss Bousfield capped all by saying to her governess--

"Perhaps, Miss Steele, you will go through the exercise with Jones and show him where he has gone wrong. Then he can write it out again for you, and try not to have any mistake this time."

This was really too much! To be pa.s.sed on to a girl who was learning Latin herself, and for her to score about my exercises! It was a conspiracy to degrade me in the eyes of myself and my fellow-mortals.

But protest was rendered impossible by Miss Bousfield quitting the room and leaving me to the mercies of her deputy.

"Why," said Miss Steele, not at all unkindly, but with a touch of raillery in her voice--"why were you such a goose, Jones, as to pretend you knew what you didn't?"

"I didn't; I forgot, that's all," said I.

"Well, look here, Jones," said she, in a friendly way--and, by the way, she was not at all bad-looking--"if you really want to get up Latin, and mean to work, I'll do my best to coach you; but if you're only playing at learning, I've something better to do."

"I'm not playing," said I. "I don't know why I've got to come and learn Latin at all."

"I suppose you are going to a school some day, aren't you?"

"I've been to one, and I've left," said I.

"Left?" said she, with a little laugh.

"Well, then, I was expelled," said I.

"Tell me all about it."

And I did, and found her not only interested and sympathetic, but decidedly indignant on my account.

"It was a great shame," said she, "especially as your friend never shot the dog at all."

"He's all right, lucky chap," said I; "he's got an exhibition to Low Heath, and is going there after the holidays."