Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/130



O Christopher left the town school, and went daily to Mr. Porteous's stone house in Gold Hill Lane, and there he began to learn that which no schoolmaster had ever taught him before,—method. For this unconventional clergyman was not only a great scholar, but a born teacher. He was full of enthusiasms, and his enthusiasms communicated themselves to Kit.

They sat in a big, bare room on the first floor. The room had no carpet; it was lined with books; it had two windows, one of which looked into a dark and damp garden, and the other into a yard. The windows had no curtains. A long plain deal table, clothless, stretched from the to one of the windows.

Kit and Mr. Porteous sat opposite each other, for when Kit was at work on Latin prose and algebra, Mr. Porteous would be amusing himself with Einstein's theory or a book of MacDougal's on psychology.

"Psycho-physical parallelism. What's that, Sorrell?"

"Don't know, sir."

"As a matter of fact it's rot. To be able to realize that a theory is rot saves one a lot of trouble. Now, what about ten minutes' boxing? You haven't hit me yet."

The table would be pushed back, and Christopher—wearing gloves that looked half as big as his head, would be given the most practical of demonstrations. In spite of his fifty-five years Mr. Porteous was very quick on his feet.

"Better than quadratic equations, Sorrell?"

"A bit, sir."

"Even when I tap you on the nose—like that! You ought to have blocked that blow."

So far as Christopher was able to discover there was only one living creature that could annoy Mr. Porteous and