"I don't quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me;
but you who are so clever--"

My father took my mother's hand: "We can teach him nothing now, Kitty.
We send him to school to be taught--"

"By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do--"

"By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again," said my father,
almost sadly. "My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener
planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and
you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one
morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed,
and asked why. What did the gardener say? 'To prevent their bearing
too soon.' There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of
produce, that the plant may last."

"Let me go to school," said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my
father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life
itself answered him.




CHAPTER VI.


A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for the
holidays.