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70 "that Lady Drew would have done something for him" She stopped.

"In what way?" said my uncle.

"She might have spoken to some one, got him into something perhaps. " She had the servant's invincible persuasion that all good things are done by patronage.

"He is not the sort of boy for whom things are done," she added, dismissing these dreams. "He doesn't accommodate himself. When he thinks Lady Drew wishes a thing, he seems not to wish it. Towards Mr. Redgrave too he has been—disrespectful—he is like his father."

"Who's Mr. Redgrave?"

"The Vicar."

"A bit independent?" said my uncle, briskly.

"Disobedient," said my mother. "He has no idea of his place. He seems to think he can get on by slighting people and flouting them. He'll learn perhaps before it is too late."

My uncle stroked his cut chin and regarded me. "Have you learnt any Latin?" he asked abruptly.

I said I had not.

"He'll have to learn a little Latin," he explained to my mother, "to qualify. H'm. He could go down to the chap at the grammar school here—it's just been routed into existence again by the Charity Commissioners—and have lessons."

"What, me learn Latin!" I cried, with emotion.

"A little," he said.

"I've always wanted" I said, and "Latin!"

I had long been obsessed by the idea that having no Latin was a disadvantage in the world, and Archie Garvell had driven the point of this pretty earnestly