in upon you a bit, accidentally, so as not to shame you before the
scouts (who are a servile set of flunkeys, incapable of understanding
the elevated feelings of a journeyman shoemaker); but I wouldn't
dream of going to live in the place, any more than I'd dream of
asking to be presented at court on the occasion of my receiving a
commission for a pair of evening shoes for the Queen's head footman.'

'Father,' said Arthur, smiling, 'you're absolutely incorrigible. Such
a dreadful old rebel against all constituted authority, human and
divine, I never did meet in the course of my existence, I believe
you're really capable of arguing a point of theology against an
archbishop. But I don't want you to come up to Oxford as a shoemaker;
I mean you to come up and live with me in rooms of our own, out
of college. Whenever I think of you, dear Father--you, who are
so infinitely nobler, and better, and truer, and more really a
gentleman than any other than I ever knew in my life--whenever I
think of you, coming secretly up to Oxford as if you were ashamed
of yourself, and visiting your own son by stealth in his rooms in
college as if you were a dun coming to ask him for money, instead
of the person whom he delights to honour--whenever I think of it,
Father, it makes my cheeks burn with shame, and I loathe myself for
ever allowing you so to bemean your own frank, true, noble nature.
I oughtn't to permit it, Father, I oughtn't to permit it; and I
won't permit it any longer.'

'Well, you never would have permitted it, Artie, if I hadn't compelled
you; for I've got all the prudence and common sense of the family
bottled up here in my own forehead,' said the old man, tapping
his bulging brow significantly. 'I don't deny that Oxford may be
an excellent school for Greek and Latin, and philosophy, and so