“True,” said her mother, “the love of eminence for its own sake.”
“And in so many different ways!” said Margaret.
“Ay, worldly greatness, riches, rank, beauty,” said Flora.
“All sorts of false flash and nonsense, and liking to be higher than one ought to be,” said Norman. “I am sure there is nothing lower, or more mean and shabby, than getting places and praise a fellow does not deserve.”
“Oh, yes!” cried Ethel, “but no one fit to speak to would do that!”
“Plenty of people do, I can tell you,” said Norman.
“Then I hope I shall never know who they are!” exclaimed Ethel. “But I’ll tell you what I was thinking of, mamma. Caring to be clever, and get on, only for the sake of beating people.”
“I think that might be better expressed.”
“I know,” said Ethel, bending her brow, with the fullness of her thought—“I mean caring to do a thing only because nobody else can do it—wanting to be first more than wanting to do one’s best.”
“You are quite right, my dear Ethel,” said her mother; “and I am glad you have found in the Gospel a practical lesson, that should be useful to you both. I had rather you did so than that you read it in Greek, though that is very nice too,” she added, smiling, as she put her hand on a little Greek Testament, in which Ethel had been reading it, within her English Bible. “Now, go and mend that deplorable frock, and if you don’t dream over it, you won’t waste too much of your holiday.”
“I’ll get it done in no time!” cried Ethel, rushing headlong upstairs, twice tripping in it before she reached the attic, where she slept, as well as Flora and Mary—a large room in the roof, the windows gay with bird-cages and flowers, a canary singing loud enough to deafen any one but girls to whom headaches were unknown, plenty of books and treasures, and a very fine view, from the dormer window, of the town sloping downwards, and the river winding away, with some heathy hills in the distance. Poking and peering about with her short-sighted eyes, Ethel lighted on a work-basket in rare disorder, pulled off her frock, threw on a shawl, and sat down cross-legged on her bed, stitching vigorously, while meantime she spouted with great emphasis an ode of Horace, which Norman having learned by heart, she had followed his example; it being her great desire to be even with him in all his studies, and though eleven months younger, she had never yet fallen behind him. On Saturday, he showed her what were his tasks for the week, and as soon as her rent was repaired, she swung herself downstairs in search of him for this purpose. She found him in the drawing-room, a pretty, pleasant room—its only fault that it was rather too low. It had windows opening down to the lawn, and was full of pretty things, works and knick-knacks. Ethel found the state of affairs unfavourable to her. Norman was intent on a book on the sofa, and at the table sat Mr. Ernescliffe, hard at work with calculations and mathematical instruments. Ethel would not for the world that any one should guess at her classical studies—she scarcely liked to believe that even her father knew of them, and to mention them before Mr. Ernescliffe would have been dreadful. So she only shoved Norman, and asked him to come.
“Presently,” he said.
“What have you here?” said she, poking her head into the book. “Oh! no wonder you can’t leave off. I’ve been wanting you to read it all the week.”
She read over him a few minutes, then recoiled: “I forgot, mamma told me not to read those stories in the morning. Only five minutes, Norman.”
“Wait a bit, I’ll come.”
She fidgeted, till Mr. Ernescliffe asked Norman if there was a table of logarithms in the house.
“Oh, yes,” she answered; “don’t you know, Norman? In a brown book on the upper shelf in the dining-room. Don’t you remember papa’s telling us the meaning of them, when we had the grand book-dusting?”
He was conscious of nothing but his book; however, she found the logarithms, and brought them to Mr. Ernescliffe, staying to look at his drawing, and asking what he was making out. He replied, smiling at the impossibility of her understanding, but she wrinkled her brown forehead, hooked her long nose, and spent the next hour in amateur navigation.
Market Stoneborough was a fine old town. The Minster, grand with the architecture of the time of Henry III., stood beside a broad river, and round it were the buildings of a convent, made by a certain good Bishop Whichcote, the nucleus of a grammar school, which had survived the Reformation, and trained up many good scholars; among them, one of England’s princely merchants, Nicholas Randall, whose effigy knelt in a niche in the chancel wall, scarlet-cloaked, white-ruffed, and black doubletted, a desk bearing an open Bible before him, and a twisted pillar of Derbyshire spar on each side. He was the founder of thirteen almshouses, and had endowed two scholarships at Oxford, the object of ambition of the Stoneborough boys, every eighteen months.
There were about sixty or seventy boarders, and the town boys slept at home, and spent their weekly holiday there on Saturday—the happiest day in the week to the May family, when alone, they had the company at dinner of Norman and Harry, otherwise known by their school names of June and July, given them because their elder brother had begun the series of months as May.
Some two hundred years back, a Dr. Thomas May had been headmaster, but ever since that time there had always been an M. D., not a D. D., in the family, owning a comfortable demesne of spacious garden, and field enough for two cows, still green and intact, among modern buildings and improvements.
The present Dr. May stood very high in his profession, and might soon have made a large fortune in London, had he not held fast to his home attachments. He was extremely skilful and clever, with a boyish character that seemed as if it could never grow older; ardent, sensitive, and heedless, with a quickness of sympathy and tenderness of heart that was increased, rather than blunted, by exercise in scenes of suffering.
At the end of the previous summer holidays, Dr. May had been called one morning to attend a gentleman who had been taken very ill, at the Swan Inn.
He was received by a little boy of ten years old, in much grief, explaining that his brother had come two days ago from London, to bring him to school here; he had seemed unwell ever since they met, and last night had become much worse. And extremely ill the doctor found him; a youth of two or three and twenty, suffering under a severe attack of fever, oppressed, and scarcely conscious, so as quite to justify his little brother’s apprehensions. He advised the boy to write to his family, but was answered by a look that went to his heart—“Alan” was all he had in the world—father and mother were dead, and their relations lived in Scotland, and were hardly known to them.
“Where have you been living, then?”
“Alan sent me to school at Miss Lawler’s when my mother died, and there I have been ever since, while he has been these three years and a half on the African station.”
“What, is he in the navy?”
“Yes,” said the boy proudly, “Lieutenant Ernescliffe. He got his promotion last week. My father was in the battle of Trafalgar; and Alan has been three years in the West Indies, and then he was in the Mediterranean, and now on the coast of Africa, in the Atalantis. You must have heard about him, for it was in the newspaper, how, when he was mate, he had the command of the Santa Isabel, the slaver they captured.”
The boy would have gone on for ever, if Dr. May had not recalled him to his brother’s present condition, and proceeded to take every measure for the welfare and comfort of the forlorn pair. He learned from other sources that the Ernescliffes were well connected. The father had been a distinguished officer, but had been ill able to provide for his sons; indeed, he died, without ever having seen little Hector, who was born during his absence on a voyage—his last, and Alan’s first. Alan, the elder by thirteen years, had been like a father to the little boy, showing judgment and self-denial that marked