ernoon would suit me best; say an hour after luncheon."
This remark closed the conversation, and they came back to me. But I
had overheard another sentence from Mr. Andrewes' lips, which filled
me with disquiet,
"I know of one that will just suit you; a capital little fellow."
So the tutor was actually decided upon. "'A capital little fellow.'
That means a nasty fussy little man!" I cried to myself. "I hate him!"
For the rest of that day, and all the next, I worried myself with
thoughts of the new tutor. On the following morning, I was standing
near one of the lodges with my father, looking at some silver
pheasants, when Mr. Andrewes rode by, and called to my father.
Now, living as I did, chiefly with servants, and spending much more of
my leisure than was at all desirable between the stables and the
housekeeper's room, my sense of honour on certain subjects was not
quite so delicate as it ought to have been. With all their many
merits, uneducated people and servants have not--as a class--strict
ideas on absolute truthfulness and honourable trustworthiness in all
matters. A large part of the plans, hopes, fears, and quarrels of
uneducated people are founded on what has been overheard by folk who
were not intended to hear it, and on what has been told again by those
to whom a matter was told in confidence. Nothing is a surer mark of
good breeding and careful "upbringing" (as the Scotch call it) than
delicacy on those little points which are trusted to one's honour. But
refinement in such matters is easily blunted if one lives much with
people who think any little meanness fair that is not found out. I
really saw no harm in trying to overhear all that I could of the
conversation between my father and Mr. Andrewes, though I was aware,
from their manner, that I was not meant to hear it. I lingered near my
father, therefore, and pretended to be watching the pheasants, for a
certain instinct made me feel that I should not like my father to see
me listening. He was one of those highly, scrupulously honourable
gentlemen, before whose face it was impossible to do or say anything
unworthy or mean.
He spoke in low tones, so that I lost most of what he said; but the
parson's voice was a peculiarly clear one, and though he lowered it, I
heard a good deal.
"I saw him yesterday," was Mr. Andrewes' first remark.
("That's the tutor," thought I.)
My father's answer I lost; but I caught fragments of Mr. Andrewes'
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