Hugh | Page 8

Beth lived wholly in love and service; she loved just as she
worked, endlessly and ungrudgingly; wherever Beth is, she will find
service to render and children to love; and I cannot think that she has

not found the way to her darling, and he to her.

III
TRURO
We all went off again to Truro in 1877, when my father was made
Bishop. The tradition was that as the train, leaving Lincoln, drew up
after five minutes at the first small station on the line, perhaps Navenby,
a little voice in the corner said: "Is this Truro?" A journey by train was
for many years a great difficulty for Hugh, as it always made him ill,
owing to the motion of the carriage.
At Truro he becomes a much more definite figure in my recollections.
He was a delicately made, light-haired, blue-eyed child, looking rather
angelic in a velvet suit, and with small, neat feet, of which he was
supposed to be unduly aware. He had at that time all sorts of odd tricks,
winkings and twitchings; and one very aggravating habit, in walking, of
putting his feet together suddenly, stopping and looking down at them,
while he muttered to himself the mystic formula, "Knuck, Nunks." But
one thing about him was very distinct indeed, that he was entirely
impervious to the public opinion of the nursery, and could neither be
ridiculed nor cajoled out of continuing to do anything he chose to do.
He did not care the least what was said, nor had he any morbid fears, as
I certainly had as a child, of being disliked or mocked at. He went his
own way, knew what he wanted to do, and did it.
My recollections of him are mainly of his extreme love of argument
and the adroitness with which he conducted it. He did not intend to be
put upon as the youngest, and it was supposed that if he was ever told
to do anything, he always replied: "Why shouldn't Fred?" He invented
an ingenious device which he once, and once only, practised with
success, of goading my brother Fred by petty shafts of domestic insult
into pursuing him, bent on vengeance. Hugh had prepared some small
pieces of folded paper with a view to this contingency, and as Fred
gave chase, Hugh flung two of his papers on the ground, being sure that

Fred would stop to examine them. The ruse was quite successful, and
while Fred was opening the papers, Hugh sought sanctuary in the
nursery. Sometimes my sisters were deputed to do a lesson with him.
My elder sister Nelly had a motherly instinct, and enjoyed a small
responsibility. She would explain a rule of arithmetic to Hugh. He
would assume an expression of despair: "I don't understand a word of
it--you go so quick." Then it would be explained again: "Now do you
understand?" "Of course I understand that." "Very well, do a sum." The
sum would begin: "Oh, don't push me--don't come so near--I don't like
having my face blown on." Presently my sister with angelic patience
would show him a mistake. "Oh, don't interfere--you make it all mixed
up in my head." Then he would be let alone for a little. Then he would
put the slate down with an expression of despair and resignation; if my
sister took no notice he would say: "I thought Mamma told you to help
me in my sums? How can I understand without having it explained to
me?" It was impossible to get the last word; indeed he used to give my
sister Maggie, when she taught him, what he called "Temper-tickets,"
at the end of the lesson; and on one occasion, when he was to repeat a
Sunday collect to her, he was at last reported to my mother, as being
wholly intractable. This was deeply resented; and after my sister had
gone to bed, a small piece of paper was pushed in beneath her door, on
which was written: "The most unhappiest Sunday I ever spent in my
life. Whose fault?"
Again, when Maggie had found him extremely cross and tiresome one
morning in the lessons she was taking, she discovered, when Hugh at
last escaped, a piece of paper on the schoolroom table, on which he had
written
"Passionate Magey Toodle Ha! Ha! The old gose."
There was another story of how he was asked to write out a list of the
things he wanted, with a view to a birthday that was coming. The list
ended:
"A little compenshion goat, and A tiny-winy train, and A nice little
pen."

The diminutives were evidently intended to give the requirements a
modest air. As for "compenshion," he had asked what some nursery
animal was made of, a fracture having displayed a