Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/333

Rh have been welcome as an escape from such literature. You would have needed wine, and not had it; cod-liver oil, and not had it; grapes, and not had them; calves' foot jelly, and had to do without. You would have been given thin gruel, and fried india-rubber, that playfully considered itself rump steak, much as you consider yourself a nobleman, and leaden dough, greasy bacon, and lukewarm bad tea. Your bed would have been lumpy and made occasionally, and your sheets changed now and then, and your pillow-case assuming the adhesiveness to your cheek of postage stamps; and there would have been a draught like a mill-race pouring in through that gap—I know it—under the door. When you wanted to sleep by day, your mother would be scouring pans in the back kitchen underneath, and when so inclined at night, your father, on the other side of the partition, would be snoring like John Willett. As you grew weaker, and more unable to endure worry, in would have come the captain, to exhort and expound, and stir and whip up your weary soul into a caper of screaming terror. You would have longed for death as an escape from the smells and the smoke, and the crude blue, and the draught, and the knots in your mattress, and the Missionary Magazines, and the pigs in the yard, and the benzoline lamp."

Mr. Welsh stooped and picked up his newspaper, which lay crumpled on the floor. He smoothed it, and folded it on the table. Then he looked hard at his nephew. Giles remained motionless, with eyes on the carpet; his brow was troubled and his lips trembling. He was very pale.

"That is how you would have ended as a boy of seventeen," pursued Mr. Welsh, remorselessly, mercilessly. "Your life you owe to Lord Lamerton, your mind has been expanded and enriched by him. Had he not sent you to college what would have been the range of your ideas? What would you have known of Shakespeare, Thackeray, Pope, Gœthe, and Dante? What appreciation of art?