Читать книгу Tom Brown at Rugby - Hughes Thomas - Страница 64

This was the residence of East and another boy in the same form, and had more interest for Tom than Windsor Castle,331 or any other residence in the British Isles. For was he not about to become the joint owner of a similar home, the first place he could call his own? One's own, – what a charm there is in the words! How long it takes boy and man to find out their worth! how fast most of us hold on to them! faster and more jealously, the nearer we are to that general home, into which we can take nothing, but must go naked as we came into the world. When shall we learn that he who multiplieth possessions multiplieth troubles, and that the one single use of things which we call our own is that they may be his who hath need of them?

"And shall I have a study like this, too?" said Tom.

"Yes, of course, you'll be chummed with some fellow on Monday, and you can sit here till then."

"What nice places!"

"They're well enough," answered East, patronizingly, "only uncommon cold at nights sometimes. Gower – that's my chum – and I make a fire with paper on the floor after supper generally, only that makes it so smoky."

"But there's a big fire out in the passage," said Tom.

"Precious little we get out of that though," said East; "Jones the præpostor332 has the study at the fire end, and he has rigged up an iron rod and green baize curtains across the passage, which he draws at night, and sits there with his door open, so he gets all the fire, and hears if we come out of our studies after eight, or make a noise. However, he's taken to sitting in the fifth-form room lately, so we do get a bit of fire now sometimes; only keep a sharp look-out that he don't catch you behind his curtain when he comes down, – that's all."