There
was book-learning to be faced. "How about scholarship? 'I'd give him
none,' says the man. 'Swallerin' comes by nature, and through more than
the mouth. I'd open him his eyes and ears, his fingers and toes, and the
very hairs on the backs of his hands; and they'll all swaller in time,
like the parts of the beastes do.' Now, that's a learned man, I allow. My
boy must go to the Council School it does appear; but thicky man will give
him more teaching in a week than school-master in a year--and there he
goes o' Saturdays--and wants no driving, moreover." He returned to his
beer, thoughtful-eyed.
The gamekeeper's son was twelve years old, and was the nucleus round which
grew the Senhusian school of a later day, where neither reading nor
writing could be had until the pupil was fifteen years old. But this is
anticipatory, for the school was a matter of long gestation and tentative
birth.
II
One September midnight, as he stirred a late supper over a small wood-
fire, he was hailed by a cry from above. "Ho, you! I ask shelter," he was
adjured. The quarter moon showed him a slim figure dark against the sky.
"Come down, and you shall have it," he answered, and continued to skim his
broth.
Pages:
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218