The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green | Page 6

Virgil the end and aim of an educational existence, and so have kept her pupil entirely under her own care; but, alas! she knew nothing further; she had no acquaintance with Greek, and she had never flirted with Euclid; and the rector persuaded Mr. Green that these were indispensable to a boy's education. So, when Mr. Verdant Green was (in stable language) "rising" sixteen, he went thrice a week to the Rectory, where Mr. Larkyns bestowed upon him a couple of hours, and taught him to conjugate {tupto}, and get over the ~Pons Asinorum~. Mr. Larkyns found his pupil not a particularly brilliant scholar, but he was a plodding one; and though he learned slowly, yet the little he did learn was learned well.
Thus the Rectory and the home studies went hand and hand, and continued so, with but little interruption, for more than two years; and Mr. Verdant Green had for some time assumed the ~toga virilis~ of stick-up collars and swallow-tail coats, that so effectually cut us off from the age of innocence; and the small family festival that annually celebrated his birthday had just been held for the eighteenth time, when
"A change came o'er the spirit of ~his~ dream."
[14 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]
CHAPTER II
MR. VERDANT GREEN IS TO BE AN OXFORD-MAN
ONE day when the family at the Manor Green had assembled for luncheon, the rector was announced. He came in and joined them, saying,with his usual friendly ~bonhomie~, "A very well-timed visit, I think! Your bell rang out its summons as I came up the avenue. Mrs. Green, I've gone through the formality of looking over the accounts of your clothing-club, and, as usual, I find them correctness itself; and here is my subscription for the next year. Miss Green, I hope that you have not forgotten the lesson in logic that Tommy Jones gave you yesterday afternoon?"
"Oh, what was that?" cried her two sisters; who took it in turns with her to go for a short time in every day to the village-school which their father and the rector had established: "Pray tell us, Mr. Larkyns! Mary has said nothing about it." "Then," replied the rector, "I am tongue-tied, until I have my fair friend's permission to reveal how the teacher was taught."
Mary shook her sunny ringlets, and laughingly gave him the required permission.
"You must know, then," said Mr. Larkyns, "that Miss Mary was giving one of those delightful object-lessons, wherein she blends so much instructive-"
"I'll trouble you for the butter, Mr. Larkyns," interrupted Mary, rather maliciously.
The rector was grey-headed, and a privileged friend. "My dear," he said, "I was just giving it you. However, the object-lesson was going on; the subject being ~Quadrupeds~, which Miss Mary very properly explained to be 'things with four legs.' Presently, she said to her class, 'Tell me the names of some quadrupeds?' when Tommy Jones, thrusting out his hand with the full conviction that he was making an important suggestion, exclaimed, 'Chairs and tables!' That was turning the tables upon Miss Mary with a vengeance!"
During luncheon the conversation glided into a favourite theme with Mrs. Green and Miss Virginia - Verdant's studies: when Mr. Larkyns, after some good-natured praise of his diligence, said, "By the way, Green, he's now quite old enough, and prepared enough for matriculation: and I suppose you are thinking of it."
Mr. Green was thinking of no such thing. He had never been at college himself, and had never heard of his father having been there; and having the old-fashioned, what-was-good-enough-for-my-father-is-good-enough-for-me sort of feel-
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 15]
ing, it had never occurred to him that his son should be brought up otherwise than he himself had been. The setting-out of Charles Larkyns for college, two years before, had suggested no other thought to Mr. Green's mind, than that a university was the natural sequence of a public school; and since Verdant had not been through the career of the one, he deemed him to be exempt from the other.
The motherly ears of Mrs. Green had been caught by the word "matriculation," a phrase quite unknown to her; and she said, "If it's vaccination that you mean, Mr. Larkyns, my dear Verdant was done only last year, when we thought the small-pox was about; so I think he's quite safe."
Mr. Larkyns' politeness was sorely tried to restrain himself from giving vent to his feelings in a loud burst of laughter; but Mary gallantly came to his relief by saying, "Matriculation means being entered at a university. Don't you remember, dearest mamma, when Mr. Charles Larkyns went up to Oxford to be matriculated last January two years?"
"Ah, yes! I do now. But I wish I had your memory, my dear."
And Mary blushed, and flattered herself that she succeeded in looking as though Mr. Charles Larkyns and his movements