Philistia | Page 9

thing on the list,' said poor
trembling, shaky Miss Luttrell, the Squire's sister, a palsied old lady
with a quavering, querulous, rasping voice. 'Two pounds of best black
tea, and mind you don't send it all dust, as you usually do. No good tea

to be got nowadays, since they took the duties off and ruined the
country. And I see a tall young man lounging about the place
sometimes, and never touching his hat to me as he ought to do. Young
people have no manners in these times, Mrs. Oswald, as they used to
have when you and I were young. Your son, I suppose, come home
from sea or something? He's in the fish-curing line, isn't he, I think I've
heard you say?'
'I don't rightly know who 'ee may mean, Miss Luttrell,' replied the
mother proudly, 'by a young man lounging about the place; but my
son's at home from Oxford at present for his vacations, and he isn't in
the fish-curing line at all, ma'am, but he's a Fellow of his college, as
I've told 'ee more than once already; but you're getting old, I see, Miss
Luttrell, and your memory isn't just what it had used to be, dost know.'
'Oh, at Oxford, is he?' Miss Luttrell chimed on vacantly, wagging her
wrinkled old head in solemn deprecation of tke evil omen. She knew it
as well as Mrs. Oswald herself did, having heard the fact at least a
thousand times before; but she made it a matter of principle never to
encourage these upstart pretensions on the part of the lower orders, and
just to keep them rigorously at their proper level she always made a
feint of forgetting any steps in advance which they might have been
bold enough to take, without humbly obtaining her previous permission,
out of their original and natural obscurity. 'Fellow of his college is he,
really? Fellow of a college! Dear me, how completely Oxford is going
to the dogs. Admitting all kinds of odd people into the University, I
understand. Why, my second brother--the Archdeacon, you know--was
a Fellow of Magdalen for some time in his younger days. You surprise
me, quite. Fellow of a college! You're perfectly sure he isn't a National
schoolmaster at Oxford instead, and that you and his father haven't got
the two things mixed up together in your heads, Mrs. Oswald?'
'No, ma'am, we'in perfectly sure of it, and we haven't got the things
mixed up in our heads at all, no more nor you have, Miss Luttrell. He
was a scholar of Trinity first, and now he's got a Fellowship at Oriel.
You must mind hearing all about it at the time, only you're getting so
forgetful like now, with years and such like.' Mrs. Oswald knew there

was nothing that annoyed the old lady so much as any allusion to her
increasing age or infirmities, and she took her revenge out of her in that
simple retributive fashion.
'A scholar of Trinity, was he? Ah, yes, patronage will do a great deal in
these days, for certain. The Rector took a wonderful interest in your
boy, I think, Mrs. Oswald. He went to Plymouth Grammar School, I
remember now, with a nomination no doubt; and there, I dare say, he
attracted some attention, being a decent, hard-working lad, and got sent
to Oxford with a sizarship, or something of the sort; there are all kinds
of arrangements like that at the Universities, I believe, to encourage
poor young men of respectable character. They become missionaries or
ushers in the end, and often get very good salaries, considering
everything, I'm told.'
'There you're wrong, again, ma'am,' put in Mrs. Oswald, stoutly. 'My
husband, he sent Harry to Plymouth School at our own expense; and
after that he got an exhibition from the school, and an open scholarship,
I think they call it, at the college; and he's been no more beholden to
patronage, ma'am, than your brother the Archdeacon was, nor for the
matter o' that not so much neither; for I've a'ways understood the old
Squire sent him first to the Charterhouse, and afterwards he got a living
through Lord Modbury's influence, as the Squire voted regular with the
Modbury people for the borough and county. But George was always
independent, Miss Luttrell, and beholden to neither Luttrells nor
Modburies, and that I tell 'ee to your face, ma'am, and no shame of it
either.'
'Well, well, Mrs. Oswald,' said the old lady, shaking her head more
violently than ever at this direct discomfiture, 'I don't want to argue
with you about the matter. I dare say your son's a very worthy young
man, and has worked his way up into a position he wasn't intended for
by Providence. But it's