Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/51

39 received intelligence of her death, that I learnt of your existence at all, and then, being informed that you were well cared for, and being myself at the time engaged upon a most laborious and absorbing undertaking, I thought it no great neglect of you to wait till, that undertaking completed, however unworthily, and my presence in England being from the nature of the thing (I need not scruple to inform you that I refer to my forth-coming edition of the plays of Sophocles) an absolute necessity, at any rate for a short season, I could make your acquaintance personally, instead of being compelled to know you and be known of you through nothing more intimate than the post!

'There are other things which I desired to say to you, but, for the present, I must forbear, for my exertions of the last few days have so worn out these wretchedly shattered nerves of mine, that I find both energy and acumen to be pitiably lacking. Let this, I pray you, be some excuse for the paltriness of this letter: and more especially for the abrupt ending which I am now about to give to it. I hope to hear from you shortly, and, in the meantime, ask you to believe me, dear Mr. Leicester, to be your affectionate uncle, .'

The letter made no impression upon me at the time; for it did not seem to have much, if any, concern with me. I had read it with half-absent thoughts: then I put it into my breast-coat pocket: finished my breakfast: got up to my locker: took out one or two books, and went off to my study to look through some Cicero, the Pro Milone, which we had for exam, at second lesson. It was not till, the exam, paper over, I stood at my locker in the hall again, putting away my pen and blotting-paper, that my mind recurred to Mr. Cholmeley and his invitation. I shut-to the locker door: took my hat off one of the pegs, and went out into the quad, with my hands in my pockets, thinking: 'I suppose I may as well go down there.… And yet I don't know. There's the boating, and I reckoned on a happy time by myself. Well, it's only for three weeks at the worst: and I suppose, as he's my uncle, I … And—he might tell me something about my mother' (I lifted up my head). 'I have just enough care about her, or her history, or whatever it is, to call it curiosity.' It was on some doubt consequent on this thought that I went in to see Craven.