companion of his sisters, with no knowledge of boyish sports, and no
desire for them.

The motherly and spinsterial views regarding his education were
favoured by the fact that he had no playmates of his own sex and age;
and since his father was an only child, and his mother's brothers had
died in their infancy, there were no cousins to initiate him into the
mysteries of boyish games and feelings. Mr. Green was a man who only
cared to live a quiet, easy-going life, and would have troubled
himself but little about his neighbours, if he had had any; but the
Manor Green lay in an agricultural district, and, saving the Rectory,
there was no other large house for miles around. The rector's wife,
Mrs. Larkyns, had died shortly after the birth of her first child, a
son, who was being educated at a public school; and this was enough,
in Mrs. Green's eyes, to make a too intimate acquaintance between her
boy and Master Larkyns a thing by no means to be desired. With her
favourite poet she would say,

"For public schools, 'tis public folly feeds;"

and, regarding them as the very hotbeds of all that is wrong, she
would turn a deaf, though polite, ear to the rector whenever he said,
"Why don't you let your Verdant go with my Charley? Charley is three
years older than Verdant, and would take him under his wing." Mrs.
Green would as soon think of putting one of her chickens under the
wing of a hawk, as intrusting the innocent Verdant to the care of the
scape-grace Charley; so she still persisted in her own system of
education, despite all that the rector could advise to the contrary.