Dr. Wortles School | Page 6

a lady. Many inquiries were made. Many meetings took place. Many difficulties arose. But at last Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke came to Bowick, and took up their abode in the school.
All the Doctor's requirements were not at once fulfilled. Mrs. Peacocke's position was easily settled. Mrs. Peacocke, who seemed to be a woman possessed of sterling sense and great activity, undertook her duties without difficulty. But Mr. Peacocke would not at first consent to act as curate in the parish. He did, however, after a time perform a portion of the Sunday services. When he first came to Bowick he had declared that he would undertake no clerical duty. Education was his profession, and to that he meant to devote himself exclusively. Nor for the six or eight months of his sojourn did he go back from this; so that the Doctor may be said even still to have failed in carrying out his purpose. But at last the new schoolmaster appeared in the pulpit of the parish church and preached a sermon.
All that had passed in private conference between the Doctor and his assistant on the subject need not here be related. Mr. Peacocke's aversion to do more than attend regularly at the church services as one of the parishioners had been very strong. The Doctor's anxiety to overcome his assistant's reasoning had also been strong. There had no doubt been much said between them. Mr. Peacocke had been true to his principles, whatever those principles were, in regard to his appointment as a curate,--but it came to pass that he for some months preached regularly every Sunday in the parish church, to the full satisfaction of the parishioners. For this he had accepted no payment, much to the Doctor's dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, it was certainly the case that they who served the Doctor gratuitously never came by the worse of the bargain.
Mr. Peacocke was a small wiry man, anything but robust in appearance, but still capable of great bodily exertion. He was a great walker. Labour in the school never seemed to fatigue him. The addition of a sermon to preach every week seemed to make no difference to his energies in the school. He was a constant reader, and could pass from one kind of mental work to another without fatigue. The Doctor was a noted scholar, but it soon became manifest to the Doctor himself, and to the boys, that Mr. Peacocke was much deeper in scholarship than the Doctor. Though he was a poor man, his own small classical library was supposed to be a repository of all that was known about Latin and Greek. In fact, Mr. Peacocke grew to be a marvel; but of all the marvels about him, the thing most marvellous was the entire faith which the Doctor placed in him. Certain changes even were made in the old-established "curriculum" of tuition,--and were made, as all the boys supposed, by the advice of Mr. Peacocke. Mr. Peacocke was treated with a personal respect which almost seemed to imply that the two men were equal. This was supposed by the boys to come from the fact that both the Doctor and the assistant had been Fellows of their colleges at Oxford; but the parsons and other gentry around could see that there was more in it than that. Mr. Peacocke had some power about him which was potent over the Doctor's spirit.
Mrs. Peacocke, in her line, succeeded almost as well. She was a woman something over thirty years of age when she first came to Bowick, in the very pride and bloom of woman's beauty. Her complexion was dark and brown,--so much so, that it was impossible to describe her colour generally by any other word. But no clearer skin was ever given to a woman. Her eyes were brown, and her eye-brows black, and perfectly regular. Her hair was dark and very glossy, and always dressed as simply as the nature of a woman's head will allow. Her features were regular, but with a great show of strength. She was tall for a woman, but without any of that look of length under which female altitude sometimes suffers. She was strong and well made, and apparently equal to any labour to which her position might subject her. When she had been at Bowick about three months, a boy's leg had been broken, and she had nursed him, not only with assiduity, but with great capacity. The boy was the youngest son of the Marchioness of Altamont; and when Lady Altamont paid a second visit to Bowick, for the sake of taking her boy home as soon as he was fit to be moved, her ladyship made a little mistake. With the sweetest and most caressing smile in the world, she offered Mrs.