I hope," said Theobald to
himself, "I hope he'll work--or else that Skinner will make him. I don't
like Skinner, I never did like him, but he is unquestionably a man of
genius, and no one turns out so many pupils who succeed at Oxford and
Cambridge, and that is the best test. I have done my share towards
starting him well. Skinner said he had been well grounded and was very
forward. I suppose he will presume upon it now and do nothing, for his
nature is an idle one. He is not fond of me, I'm sure he is not. He
ought to be after all the trouble I have taken with him, but he is
ungrateful and selfish. It is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be
fond of his own father. If he was fond of me I should be fond of him,
but I cannot like a son who, I am sure, dislikes me. He shrinks out of
my way whenever he sees me coming near him. He will not stay five
minutes in the same room with me if he can help it. He is deceitful. He
would not want to hide himself away so much if he were not deceitful.
That is a bad sign and one which makes me fear he will grow up
extravagant. I am sure he will grow up extravagant. I should have given
him more pocket-money if I had not known this--but what is the good of
giving him pocket-money? It is all gone directly. If he doesn't buy
something with it he gives it away to the first little boy or girl he
sees who takes his fancy. He forgets that it's my money he is giving
away. I give him money that he may have money and learn to know its
uses, not that he may go and squander it immediately. I wish he was not
so fond of music, it will interfere with his Latin and Greek. I will
stop it as much as I can. Why, when he was translating Livy the other
day he slipped out Handel's name in mistake for Hannibal's, and his
mother tells me he knows half the tunes in the 'Messiah' by heart. What
should a boy of his age know about the 'Messiah'? If I had shown half as
many dangerous tendencies when I was a boy, my father would have
apprenticed me to a greengrocer, of that I'm very sure," etc., etc.

Then his thoughts turned to Egypt and the tenth plague. It seemed to him
that if the little Egyptians had been anything like Ernest, the plague
must have been something very like a blessing in disguise. If the
Israelites were to come to England now he should be greatly tempted not
to let them go.

Mrs Theobald's thoughts ran in a different current. "Lord Lonsford's
grandson--it's a pity his na