Читать книгу Philistia - Allen Grant - Страница 11

Table of Contents

‘My dear Ronald,’ said Lady Le Breton, much more warmly than before, ‘this is really quite providential. Are they at Dunbude now?’

‘No, mother. She writes from Wilton Place. They’re up in town for Lord Exmoor’s gout, I know. I heard they were on Sunday.’

‘Then I shall go and see Lady Exmoor this very morning about it. It’s exactly the right place for Ernest. A little good society will get rid of all his nonsensical notions in a month or two. He’s lived too exclusively among his radical set at Oxford. And then it’ll be such a capital thing for him to be in the house continually with Hilda; she’s a girl of such excellent tone. I fancy—I’m not quite sure, but I fancy—that Ernest has a decided taste for the company of people, and even of young girls, who are not in Society. He’s so fond of that young man Oswald, who Herbert tells me is positively the son of a grocer—yes, I’m sure he said a grocer!—and it seems, from what Herbert writes me, that this Oswald has brought a sister of his up this term from behind the counter, on purpose to set her cap at Ernest. Now you boys have, unfortunately, no sisters, and therefore you haven’t seen as much of girls of a good stamp—not daily and domestically I mean—as is desirable for you, from the point of view of Society. But if Ernest can only be induced to take this tutorship at the Exmoors’, he’ll have an opportunity of meeting daily with a really nice girl, like Hilda; and though of course it isn’t likely that Hilda would take a fancy to her brother’s tutor—the Exmoors are such VERY conservative people in matters of rank and wealth and family and so forth—quite un-Christianly so, I consider—yet it can’t fail to improve Ernest’s tone a great deal, and raise his standard of female society generally. It’s really a very distressing thought to me, Ronald, that all my boys, except dear Herbert, should show such a marked preference for low and vulgar companionship. It seems to me, you both positively prefer as far as possible the society of your natural inferiors. There’s Ernest must go and take up with the friendship of that snuffy old German Socialist glass-cutter; while you are always running after your Plymouth Brethren and your Bible Christians, and your other ignorant fanatical people, instead of going with me respectably to St. Alphege’s to hear the dear Archdeacon! It’s very discouraging to a mother, really, very discouraging.’