OLIVER’S NOTION OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP.
OLIVER got into a habit of standing in his shop-door, leaning against
one or other of the door-posts. He stood there to keep his weaknesses
well in hand, as a declaration of war against all promulgators of
recognised theories of gentility, and as a proclamation of fraternity
and equality to his brother-shopkeepers. If he had known it, he was
rather a striking figure at the station he had chosen. He was a
Saul among the people. His shoulders were only rounded by his own
shrugs. His complexion was fresh and slightly weather-beaten, neither
tanned into leather nor baked into paste, nor faded into a girlish
delicacy. His hands, when he took them out of his pockets, were the
unbroadened, unflattened, well-kept hands of a man who for a period
of years has handled books chiefly, and only plied an oar or a foil,
and carried a rod or a gun, by way of that variety which has saved
his fingers from becoming either slender or plump. His feet showed
the effect of contact with the wares of a higher order of bootmaker
than any known in Friarton. The clothes Oliver had bought and paid
for from an Oxford tailor were not worn out, and though he meant to
replace them by the work of a Friarton tailor in all its integrity, it
was not to be supposed that even then he would be able to prevent an
imitative townsman doing his best to copy the University ‘cut;’ so that
Oliver, in spite of himself, would still wear suits which were a faint
reflection of the coats of the disciples of Poole.
Oliver was standing in this guise at his shop-door the next time he saw
the Stanhopes; and Harry called out again in the same tone of cheerful
curiosity, ‘I say, Constable, what are you about there?’
After his former experience, Oliver was pleased to find that now he did
not change colour—by the ghost of a shade. He simply moved a quarter
of an inch to enable himself to glance up at the sign above his head,
and call the Stanhopes’ attention to it—especially to the glittering
spot where the Christian name ‘Peter’ had been erased and replaced by
‘Oliver.’ ‘Was reading not included in your education?’ he enquired,
lazily.
It was Harry who grew red, gaped and stopped short, while Horace looked
sharply from the sign to Harry to get his cue from his prompter.
‘Come, now,’ stammered Harry, taken aback as he was, and speaking out
impulsively according to his wont, ‘this is too much to make us cram.
You don’t mean to say you’re a——’
‘A baker as well as a miller,’ suggested Oliver, with a laugh; ‘just
so. I wish I could say I was keeping shop—I am hardly good for so
much—but I’m looking after the premises and my business in a general
way.’
Harry stared, and then he swallowed the camel at a gulp, bursting out
into a laugh on his own account as he accomplished the feat. ‘All
right, old fellow,’ he took it upon him to assure Oliver; ‘I grow the
corn and you complete the process, not merely by grinding it, but by
going a step farther and converting it into food for man as well as
for beast—why should the service to the beast be regarded as more
honourable than that to the man? As well keep a shop here as a store in
Adelaide or Victoria. Look here, Constable, invite us in and give us a
tip of tarts.’
‘No,’ said Oliver, ‘my customers are the genuine article, and pay
for what they get—all save an exceptional small maid or man in rags,
who may be caught looking hungrily in at the windows. Your coats are
as good as mine, and I’ll swear you’ve had an excellent breakfast on
kidneys or mutton chops sufficient to spoil your youthful appetite for
tarts for some hours to come. But I’ll send one of my carts, in its
rounds, to call at the Farm and supply you with bread, if you like to
give me the order.’
‘And he expects us to say we are obliged to him for proposing to
furnish us with his goods on his own terms, and on short credit, no
doubt! We’ll see him hanged first, Horry. Is there any other baker in
the town, less of a wretched screw, that we can favour with our custom?
though of course we shan’t trust your report. I’ll tell you what,
Constable, we’ll run handicaps—my corn against your bread.’
‘You had better grow your crop first.’
‘Oh! never fear.’
Oliver could not help being amused by Harry Stanhope’s manner of taking
the discovery. The older man was touched a little, too, by the lad’s
staunchness to his new colours, his honest if spasmodic efforts to
accommodate himself to a changed order of things, in direct opposition
to every standard and watchword of the past, and to all the traditions
of his youth.
Upon the whole the new-comers, Harry Stanhope with Horace in his wake,
behaved a great deal better—Fan would have said in vindication of their
birth and breeding—than nearly the entire upper ten long resident in
Friarton, on Oliver Constable’s declining to avail himself of their
permission and his own power to join their order. Harry received the
shock, made up his mind to it, and went on as if nothing had happened,
and everything was the same as before. If Constable chose to be a
baker, of all trades, let him. For that matter, who could hinder
him? and what did it signify? Harry took it fully for granted that
Constable might still preserve all the claims he had ever had to being
a gentleman. Certainly Harry had not been in the habit of reckoning
bakers gentlemen, though he had known great brewers who were granted
the ‘Open sesame’ by his people. But he had enough modesty left to
own he and his people might have been mistaken in their partial and
arbitrary estimate. Unquestionably it helped Harry greatly in his
judgment to be sensible that he himself continued a gentleman, in spite
of his idle talk of going down in the social scale and sinking his coat
of arms and all ‘the humbug’ of his former station, in the plain style
and title of Harry Stanhope, yeoman.
The Wrights and Fremantles of Friarton said among themselves that
Oliver Constable had disappointed, nay, cheated them, in permitting
them to extend to him the right-hand of fellowship on false premises.
True, he had taken University honours as had been predicted of him,
but he was about to degrade these honours by sinking them in trade of
the most plebeian description. The fact was race, like murder, would
out. Young Constable came of generations of millers and bakers, instead
of masters of grammar schools and the like, and he must perforce return
to the hereditary calling with its substantial profits. It had not been
in scholarship to save him from his natural destiny.
Notwithstanding their just displeasure, Oliver’s old allies and patrons
did not at once give him the cut direct, to his face. As Mrs. Hilliard
had shrewdly defined the position, he could not rid himself in a
moment of the independent fortune his father had left him, and of his
university training. His going into trade might be a mere passing skit,
like the freaks of some other University men tinged with the craze
of doing something, at once out of the common and communistic, which
distinguished a few of the young scholars and geniuses of the era;
or it might be a simple step to winding up the business and getting
rid of it; or it might be feeling Oliver’s way to popularity with some
dim notion of getting into Parliament at a later date. If so, though
the fellow might be a dreaming scheming fool for his pains, it would
be a totally different kind of folly, which society could not afford
to condemn severely. And a mistake might be awkward. The Fremantles
and Co. could not be altogether sure of the motive at work, and, like
politic people, they were disposed to temporise and refrain for a
while from compromising themselves strongly. In addition the Friarton
magnates wondered a little how Constable would get on, how he would
manage to combine qualifications which the Wrights and Fremantles were
accustomed to consider far apart. In the dearth of sources of social
interest and excitement, Oliver’s former friends retained a great
curiosity, in the middle of their indignation and disgust, with regard
to his proceedings. Therefore ladies and gentlemen greeted him in his
new character blandly at first, and even made half-jesting allusions
to his having become what the speakers termed courteously a ‘business
man,’ just hinting that he would be a _rara avis_ among the common
shopkeepers at Friarton. The Wrights and Fremantles showed that it
would not be their fault if they did not drop young Constable—supposing
they were compelled to drop him—by imperceptible degrees, and with a
gentle decorum and consideration both for themselves and him.
But Oliver would not consent to be treated as a spectacle for men
and angels. When he found he was to be smilingly stared at, pumped
dry, and rallied, he broke off, rashly perhaps, his intercourse with
his old masters, and Fan, who had shown she was capable of bridling
her own pride and compelling it to go in harness, could not, in the
middle of her mortification, conquer her sore pride for Oliver so as to
make any effectual resistance to the renunciation of their connection
with professional and better-bred Friarton. Before Harry Stanhope had
appeared on the scene to change the current of her ideas and reinspirit
her, she had given in gloomily to Oliver’s determination to decline
the few and wary invitations extended jointly to the brother and
sister after Oliver’s return home, by the heads of the best houses in
Friarton. The would be hosts and hostesses took the unsatisfactory
couple at their word with a rapidity that savoured of relief.
‘The Constables know their own place best, after all,’ said the high
contending faction among themselves, with admirable candour. ‘We are
not going to force them to continue to come to our houses, when they
may have felt themselves not at home all the time, though we did what
we could to put these young persons at their ease.’
‘Constable has grown up an awkward brutally abrupt fellow, full of
angles and crotchets. He has nothing conciliatory about him,’ said
Mr. Fremantle, who was himself eminently gliding in his progress
through the world. ‘I don’t believe now, that he would ever get over
his original disadvantages—clever as he undoubtedly is—in a different
sphere. So, no doubt, he judges wisely in falling back into the old
track, where he may be as rude and overbearing as he likes. Probably
we erred in tempting him from it, though it seemed a pity that talents
like his should be wasted in a mill and bakehouse.’
‘And you know, my dear,’ said Mrs. Fremantle, who was by temperament
caressing, and in the absence of other channels for her social
affectionateness, became necessarily the bosom friend of Mrs. Wright,
though the two were only sympathetic on class grounds, ‘good schools
have not done everything for Miss Constable.’
‘Yes,’ answered Mrs. Wright. But in spite of her assent she was
a tiresome woman, in doubt about everything, given to argue the
conclusiveness of the plainest proposition. Thus she immediately turned
and contended. ‘But they were excellent schools. The plain old father,
and the brother with more ambitious views in those days, made a good
selection. Miss Constable was at a school at Norwood, where my cousin
Constantia’s daughters went afterwards, and she left it for Madame
Fléchier’s in Brussels, where Miss Hilliard’s nieces the Cholmondeley
girls finished their education. By-the-by,’ added Mrs. Wright, in
fresh helpless uncertainty, ‘they count some relationship with the
Constables.’
‘In a slightly nearer degree than we all do through Adam,’—Mrs.
Fremantle put up her chin impatiently. ‘It is only a whim of darling
Mrs. Hilliard’s to acknowledge it. As for Miss Constable’—the lady took
up the broken thread of her discourse—‘she is so cold and stiff, she
has got into such a habit of repressing herself—I suppose from having
been compelled to hold the other shopkeepers at arm’s length, it is
a positive effort to maintain an acquaintance with her; and where is
the use, when she will never let herself out so that one has no chance
of knowing her any better? It would be cruel to tease the Constables
further by going on—trying to draw them away from their old set, which
is quite respectable in its way. They may really be happier in it,
education or no education. We have given them the opportunity of coming
among us, and if we do not suit them, there is no more to be said. Of
course we shall still be on bowing and speaking terms, which may be a
little awkward when it leads to nothing more—otherwise I daresay it is
all for the best.’
Fan writhed under what she guessed of this result, and Oliver grinned
at it. But neither of the two did anything, after they had set the ball
moving, to prevent the catastrophe.
The single reservation in the sentence which consigned the
Constables once more to the Coventry of vulgar allies, occurred
in the case of Mrs. Hilliard. Her house was, as in the beginning,
the neutral ground on which the relapsed tradespeople could still
encounter the professional circle. Mrs. Hilliard had proclaimed her
blood-relationship with the Constables, while it was a point of honour
with her to assert openly her interest in the most distant of her
kindred. She announced now with the greatest _sang froid_, and with
a suspicion of gratified mischief, in the line she adopted—including
as she did the culprits among the recipients of the announcement—that
she did not mean to give Oliver and Fan Constable up, neither did she
mean them to give her up, since there were two at making a bargain and
picking a quarrel.
It is putting it mildly to say that Fan did not like Louisa Hilliard
and objected to being taken up by her, either on the score of remote
relationship or anything else; but the girl could not bring herself,
even with her strong dislikes, to reject the last refuge against
finding herself reduced solely to the society of the Dadds and the
Polleys.
Oliver rather enjoyed the broad tolerance of Mrs. Hilliard’s
self-indulgent _bonhomie_, and he had a hankering still after having
the entrance to the Meadows, though he availed himself of it to his own
hurt, smarting as he did under the total absence of sympathy there,
even more so than at home, from another Hilliard than Louisa.
Between Fan’s passiveness and Oliver’s treacherous inclinations, the
exception to the social ban was admitted, and Mrs. Hilliard carried her
point triumphantly as usual.
The tradespeople of Friarton could not be said to welcome with open
arms Oliver Constable’s return to their shops and back parlours. His
old acquaintances had liked him better than they had liked Fan, though
he had been of Fan’s mind once on a day, and had looked down from the
giddy heights of juvenile scholarship on the dull fat plains of trade,
vowing superciliously that he should never rest in them. But, oddly
enough, in proportion as Oliver became a man and changed his mind, his
early friends learnt to distrust him more and more. True, Oliver’s
recantation was received with shouts from young Dadd, chuckles from
old Dadd, and giggles from the Polley girls, as at a conquest won by
their class over that which pretended to be the superior rank. But
Oliver’s outward adherence did not flatter his fellows out of their
rooted conviction that he was not one of them, and might prove no
better than a traitor in the camp. He was ‘a chield’ preparing to come
among them, and take notes—not for the purpose of printing the notes,
which would have been disloyal enough—but, what was far worse, with
the intention of gauging the moral and intellectual condition of the
shop people, and with the conceited aspiration of elevating it. And
they had a strong objection to being thus elevated by a wolf in sheep’s
clothing—old Peter Constable’s son spoilt by his own college education.
He was giving himself out as intending to carry on his father’s trade,
which he was safe to make a mess of, while he was nourishing deep
designs under the cloak of the mill and the baker’s shop. He to be a
miller and baker! Old Dadd had heard Oliver could read Greek like a
parson, but he could no more throw off a covering of pie crust than
he could fly. Why, it was only the other day he was walking up the
High Street with his arm linked in Fremantle’s! Fremantle might be as
poor as a church-mouse and only a better sort of school usher, but he
could read the lessons in his white surplice on Sundays the same as the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Dadd went in for chapel, not church, still
even his minister owned that Fremantle was a cut above him in this
world. And there was Mrs. Fremantle in her shabby gown—that woman only
acknowledged the existence of such a female as Mrs. Dadd in the shop.
No doubt Mrs. Fremantle was as gracious as could be over the counter,
which was no less than her bounden duty, seeing the length of time her
bills stood in his books, still, in the middle of her graciousness, she
managed to convey the impression that his—Dadd’s—better half was of a
different order of creation from that which had the honour of claiming
Mrs. Fremantle as its product. Well, old Dadd, for his part, did not
object. He was aware that the Fremantles, for all their poverty and
shabbiness, dined at the squire’s table when he was at home, while Dadd
and Mrs. Dadd got no farther than the housekeeper’s room; and neither
did he wish to change places with the schoolmaster and his lady in this
respect. But let fish be fish, and fowl fowl—not ‘’alf and ’alf,’ as
Oliver Constable would have them.
Mrs. Hilliard was not wrong when she judged from her own feelings the
general disagreeableness of being dragged up to breathe a higher and
purer atmosphere.
At the same time, as may have been seen, the shop people, with their
plain common sense and shrewd wits—sharpened by jealousy, alarm, and
latent sluggish hostility—arrived more quickly and surely at Oliver’s
eccentric, high-flying views than the more cultivated portion of the
community puzzling over his meaning.
Oliver Constable laid himself out to gain old Dadd and induce his
senior to look upon him as a man and a brother. Oliver had patience
with the draper’s ways, including the loud stale jokes he poked at
Oliver as to his getting a wife and Fan’s finding a husband. According
to Dadd’s ideas, courtship in some form was the one engrossing concern
of all young people—after the attention which the young man was bound
to pay to his trade and the pleasure the girl might take in her smart
clothes and her outings, which, to be sure, were adjuncts to the main
business of her life. Indeed Dadd looked charitably to a suitable
marriage for Oliver Constable as the most likely cure for the lad’s
folly. Certainly young Dadd, who was several years Oliver’s senior,
remained a bachelor. But his father explained the contradiction by
rubbing his hands and accusing Jack of being ‘a sad dog’ among the
ladies.
Jack blustered out, ‘What nonsense, guv’ner! Anyone might tell I had
not much to say to the girls by the looks of me,’ clearly regarding the
charge as made out and as a feather in his cap. Even his mother, in her
sleek demureness, seemed to agree with him.
Oliver manfully stood the ‘heavy teas’ under which the Dadds’ table
groaned. He ate gallantly the fat bacon and pickled salmon in order
that his entertainers, like John Gilpin’s neighbours, might not say
he was proud. He did not faint at the sight, or smell, of the raw
onions, to which the whole Dadd family were partial. He did not throw
down his arms and fly when gin-and-water succeeded tea, and added
its contribution to the already salient odours of the back parlour.
Luckily, Oliver had a good digestion and a robust constitution; and
though the details had not to him the fascination of novelty which
they might have possessed for Harry Stanhope, neither were they the
exaggerated offences which they had proved to Fan in her craving for
outward refinement. It goes without saying that Oliver was free from
the affected, effeminate horror of the small pretender to gentility,
the snob who, having just cast his native coarse slough, has wriggled
himself into a new coat of superfine delicacy and fastidiousness.
Oliver rather respected the Dadds for not altering their ordinary style
of hospitality out of compliment to what they might imagine his changed
habits and tastes.
The Dadds’ independence saved Oliver the trouble—which worried him
at the Polleys, of having perpetually to rebut the attacks which
Mrs. Polley with her high spirit made on his supposed conversion to
fine living. Mrs. Polley would not—any more than old Dadd—deign to
accommodate herself to Oliver Constable’s presumed new standard, but
she would persist in bringing it up in the form of testy apologies for
the deprivations he had to suffer. ‘Of course, our teas ain’t like
the meals you’ve been accustomed to, Mr. Oliver,’ she always began,
exasperatingly. ‘French cooks and a dozen courses, I dare say, no less
will serve you now—I am sure I pity your sister—and your choice of
wines every day. All I can say for our poached eggs and fried mackerel
is they are new laid and I know the hens as laid them, while the fish
is fresh and done to a turn, though I say it that should not. They are
honest English dishes honestly come by and paid for.’
Then the girls would giggle and protest. ‘Oh! mother!’ in chorus. And
’Mily, the youngest and most forward of the sisters, would toss her
elaborately dressed head and cry, ‘I hope you are not hard to please,
Mr. Oliver; I should never put myself about to cosset any man. There!’
At last the poor creature the father, whose wife had stood in the
breach, and prevented him from dragging down the family to ruin, would
edge in his word and declare solemnly—not without a timid attempt at
pleasing his mistress, who was not great enough to forget what she had
done for him—‘Missus Polley never did go in for kickshaws or waste; she
always was a one to prefer what was plain and satisfying.’
In return for the tribute cast at her feet, Mrs. Polley would look
round with complacent contempt, and charge her husband: ‘You shut up,
Polley, and eat your victuals; you know you have a trick of keeping the
table waiting. I am glad none of the gals take after you, unless it be
Liza—soft thing! Slow at meat is slow at work. You may be thankful I
never were a dawdler, and that I went in—the greater fool I—for looking
after you.’
Whereupon poor Mr. Polley would subside into silence and the munching
of his food as fast as his few teeth would go.
And the girls would titter afresh and cry again, ‘Oh! mother!’ in
another round of family applause. Only Liza would protest against
the accusation of procrastination—particularly where her favourite
‘beverage’ was in question. They all knew, Liza said—almost as solemnly
and pompously as her father spoke—that she could sip tea morning, noon,
and night. There was no substitute for it—unless lemonade.
‘Or beer—especially when Jack Dadd is having a glass,’ suggested ’Mily,
flippantly.
The result of the impertinence was that the two sisters began to
dispute together with painful frankness and vigour as to which of
them paid least heed to Jack Dadd and his actions, till Mrs. Polley,
who took and kept the high constable tone in her family, called the
noisy pair to order, as it were, with a wave of her truncheon, and an
imperious, ‘Be quiet, gals! Don’t be two sillies putting up your backs
before Mr. Oliver.’
But although Dadd the draper was brought to discuss with Oliver, in
the character of a fellow-tradesman, the general principles of sales,
profits, ready money discount, long credit, bad debts, the danger of
the co-operative system, apprentices, journeymen, hours of closing and
holidays, the cautious veteran would no more approach, in the course
of conversation, his individual practice in such debatable doings as
a percentage to the seller on each day’s sales, or with regard to
so-called ‘bankrupt stocks,’ ‘damaged goods,’ ‘clearing-off sales,’
‘ready-made work done on the premises,’ than he would have spoken
of these trade mysteries to the vicar, Mr. Houghton, or Dadd’s own
minister, Mr. Holland.
Moreover, old Dadd would say ‘sir’ in addressing his young
fellow-townsman. Mrs. Dadd was quite as mannerly, with a certain
folding of the hands and falsetto tone of voice which took the place
of the twinkle in her husband’s eye and his sturdy accents, in their
common politeness; and so long as that small term of half-ironical
respect came in with every alternate sentence from the two, Oliver had
scanty hope of gaining ground with them.
Jack Dadd was not unwilling to be seen walking along the High Street
with Constable of Friarton Mill, late of St. Bodolph’s, Oxford
University, or standing with him at their respective shop-doors. Jack
went farther: he slapped his old school-fellow and brother-tradesman
on the shoulder at parting with a resounding slap, which Oliver bore
unflinchingly, though he did not return it. The young draper addressed
the miller and baker as ‘Noll,’ in the hearing of the Polley girls, and
Oliver answered cheerfully the free abbreviation of his Christian name;
yet, though Oliver was anxiously wary in his intercourse with Jack, and
scrupulously avoided the most distant reference to printed matter which
was not in the ‘Friarton News,’ all the same, Jack had continually
present to him his own literary deficiencies, especially in the
rudimentary branches of grammar and spelling. What was lacking in the
last might have escaped detection for the present, but the culprit had
a guilty conviction that Constable would somehow guess that he—Jack—was
never sure in writing a letter when he ought or ought not to double his
consonants, or to introduce an _e_ after a _b_ or an _l_ or a _t_. And
Jack had an inward uncomfortable impression that a college swell must
look down upon him for such a weakness; even though Constable might be
a big enough swell, or a sufficiently artful dodger, not to brandish
his superior advantages in Jack’s face.
It is by no means pleasant to be haunted by a sense of inferiority even
in so small a matter. And Jack Dadd was not accustomed to submit to
such an experience.
Till Oliver came home, Jack had swaggered and crowed a good deal over
the young men of his class in Friarton and the neighbourhood.
Old Dadd was well-to-do, and Jack was an only child. Of course he was
not like an ordinary young man in the drapery line to which he had been
bred. He was the young master and successor to a good business.
But now Jack Dadd began to fear that Oliver Constable—queer fish and
out of the water as he was—would cut Jack out with some of his most
ardent admirers. In taking up his father’s trade Oliver had still
retained his reputation for wonderful cleverness and learning, above
all for that swell’s tone of consideration, tolerance, and gentleness
which qualified Constable’s bluntest ways, and of which none had a
keener perception than poor Jack, who lacked it utterly. Girls were
so foolish and vain, always caught by novelty and gentility. No doubt
Oliver Constable was not a gentleman born, any more than the rest of
them could boast of being lords’ and squires’ sons. What was more, he
had farther diminished his claims to being a gentleman by choosing to
work—at least to have a mill and a bakehouse and shop, instead of to
live idle and take his pleasure out of the fortune old Constable had
left, as Jack felt certain he would have done in Oliver’s place.
Still, when all was said, Constable was the nearest thing to a
gentleman that would cross the path of girls in Jack’s circle, and Jack
reflected the girls would make the most of Oliver, and he would become
the rage.
That goose Liza Polley, who pretended to read collections of poetry,
would be making a hero of Constable, and that minx ’Mily would be
treating the fellow to some of her sauce.
Jack, on his part and speaking impartially, was disappointed in
Constable’s abilities and attainments. It was all very well to admit
that Oliver Constable had got a fine education and had not become an
insolent shaver on the strength of it. Hang him! he was too near the
real Mackay for that. But actually he did not know anything worth
caring about. He could not put Jack up to a single wrinkle on any point
he was interested in, with regard to which Constable had been in a
position to have become a valuable authority if he were not a noodle in
some respects.
Jack had sought to balance the effeminate nature of his daily
occupations in matching skeins of silk and turning over gloves, by
an excess of manliness in his recreations. He went in strongly for
games and sport. He could not often get away to attend a morning or
an afternoon cricket match, for his father had old-fashioned strict
notions of what was due to business and business hours. Therefore
Jack’s pink and white complexion lost the chance of being tanned brown.
But he played cricket and bowls with a club of Friarton shopkeepers
every fine evening all the summer. He took in ‘Bell’s Life;’ he kept
a bull-terrier, and sometimes managed to engage it in a ratting match.
And he betted as regularly on the Derby and the Oxford and Cambridge
boat-race as if he had driven more than once in his life to Epsom
Downs, wearing a green veil and scattering flour on the way, or as if
he had a hereditary association with either University.
Jack found Oliver Constable, for all his so-called attainments,
lamentably behind him in the important matters referred to. Oliver
could play cricket decently indeed, but he could do so when he was a
boy. And it was only by dragging what information there was to get,
word by word, out of him, that a Friarton cricketer could ascertain how
the nobs at the University played their game. Constable did not read a
sporting paper. He had not been in the habit of betting, though he did
not preach a sermon against the practice, possibly he meant his silent
example to serve as a text. Altogether, and this was a consolation, if
he said as little to the girls about the college spreads and blow-outs,
he might not take the wind out of Jack’s sails to the extent he had
apprehended. But the deficiency certainly rendered Oliver less of an
acquisition to his old acquaintances.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
Transcriber Notes
Hyphens standardised across text.
The following are corrections to the original text.
p11 close quote removed from (pleasure to look at.)
p36 “distinugish” changed to (distinguish third- or).
p69 close quote added to (at your heels.’)
p81 close quote added to (scholar and gentleman.’)
p97 “downfal” changed to (downfall of all the).
p98 period changed to comma (familiar mill gallery,)
p111 period added to (‘Oh, Oliver, think again.’)
p112 close quote added to (are going to do,’)
p181 single changed to double quote (“he is my servant)