“But what the devil does my mother want, coming
here?”
“I haven’t the pleasure of knowing your
mother, so I cannot tell what the devil she can want,
coming here.”
“Humph!”
He walked away.
The Christmas dinner.
Mr. and Mrs. Bloomfield arrived; the former a benevolent,
grey-haired man, with a large nose and small mouth,
yet with nothing of the foolish look which often accompanies
such a malconformation; and the latter a nice-looking
little body, middle-aged, rather more; with half-grey
curls, and a cap with black ribbons. Indeed, they
were both in mourning. Mr. Bloomfield bore himself
with a kind of unworldly grace, and Mrs. Bloomfield
with a kind of sweet primness. The schoolmaster
was inclined to be talkative; nor was his wife behind
him; and that was just what we wanted.
“I am sorry to see you in mourning,” said
the colonel to Mr. Bloomfield, during dessert.
“I trust it is for no near relative.”
“No relative at all, sir. But a boy of
mine, to whom, through God’s grace, I did a
good turn once, and whom, as a consequence, I loved
ever after.”
“Tell Colonel Cathcart the story, James,”
said his wife. “It can do no harm to anybody
now; and you needn’t mention names, you know.
You would like to hear it, wouldn’t you, sir?”
“Very much indeed,” answered the colonel.
“Well, sir,” began the schoolmaster, “there’s
not much in it to you, I fear; though there was a
good deal to him and me. I was usher in a school
at Peckham once. I was but a lad, but I tried
to do my duty; and the first part of my duty seemed
to me, to take care of the characters of the boys.
So I tried to understand them all, and their ways
of looking at things, and thinking about them.
“One day, to the horror of the masters, it was
discovered that a watch belonging to one of the boys
had been stolen. The boy who had lost it was
making a dreadful fuss about it, and declaring he would
tell the police, and set them to find it. The
moment I heard of it, my suspicion fell, half by knowledge,
half by instinct, upon a certain boy. He was
one of the most gentlemanly boys in the school; but
there was a look of cunning in the corner of his eye,
and a look of greed in the corner of his mouth, which
now and then came out clear enough to me. Well,
sir, I pondered for a few moments what I should do.
I wanted to avoid calling any attention to him; so
I contrived to make the worst of him in the Latin
class—he was not a bad scholar—and
so keep him in when the rest went to play. As
soon as they were gone, I took him into my own room,
and said to him, ’Fred, my boy, you knew your
lesson well enough; but I wanted you here. You
stole Simmons’s watch.’”
“You had better mention no names, Mr. Bloomfield,”
interrupted his wife.
