Poor Blyth had to leave
Cambridge first, where he was sure to have done very well indeed, and at
his wish he was sent afloat, where he would have done even better; and
then, as his father's troubles deepened, and ended in his death of heart
complaint, the poor boy was left to keep his broken-hearted mother upon
nothing but a Latin Grammar. And I fear it is like a purser's dip. But
here we are at Stonnington--a long steep pitch. Let us slacken sail, my
dears, as we have brought no cockswain. Neither of you need land, you
know, but I shall go into the schoolroom."
"One thing I want to know," said the active-minded Dolly, as the horses
came blowing their breath up the hill: "if his father was Sir Edmond,
and he is the only child, according to all the laws of nature, he ought
to be Sir Blyth Scudamore."
"It shows how little you have been out--as good Mrs. Twemlow expresses
it--that you do not even understand the laws of nature as between a
baronet and a knight."
"Oh, to be sure; I recollect! How very stupid of me! The one goes on,
and the other doesn't, after the individual stops. But whose fault is
it that I go out so little? So you see you are caught in your own trap,
papa."
CHAPTER VIII
A LESSON IN THE AENEID
In those days Stonnington was a very pretty village, and such it
continued to be until it was ravaged by a railway. With the railway came
all that is hideous and foul, and from it fled all that is comely.
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