Part 27 (2/2)

and Miss Fountain just sitting down to luncheon. David and Arthur were actually together somewhere, perhaps going through the farce of geometry. He was half vexed at finding no food for his suspicions.

Presently, so spiteful is chance, the door opened, and in marched Arthur and David.

”I have made him stay to luncheon for once,” said Arthur; ”he couldn't refuse me; we are to part so soon.” Arthur got next to Lucy, and had David on his left. Mr. Talboys gave Mr. Fountain a look, and very soon began to play his battery upon David.

”How do you naval officers find time to learn geometry?”

”What? don't you know it is a part of our education, sir?”

”I never heard that before.”

”That is odd; but perhaps you have spent all your life ash.o.r.e” (this in commiserating accents). David then politely explained to Mr.

Talboys that a man who looked one day to command a s.h.i.+p must not only practice seamans.h.i.+p, but learn navigation, and that navigation was a n.o.ble art founded on the exact sciences as well as on practical experiences; that there did still linger upon the ocean a few of the old captains, who, born at a period when a s.h.i.+p, in making a voyage, used to run down her longitude first, and then begin to make her lat.i.tude, could handle a s.h.i.+p well, and keep her off a lee sh.o.r.e _if they saw it in time,_ but were, in truth, hardly to be trusted to take her from port to port. ”We get a word with these old salts now and then when we are becalmed alongside, and the questions they put make us quite feel for them. Then they trust entirely to their instruments. They can take an observation, but they can't verify one.

They can tack her and wear her (I have seen them do one when they should have done the other), and they can read the sky and the water better than we young ones; and while she floats they stick to her, and the greater the danger the louder the oaths--but that is all.” He then a.s.sured them with modest fervor that much more than that was expected of the modern commander, particularly in the two capital articles of exact science and gentlemanly behavior. He concluded with considerable grace by apologizing for his enthusiastic view of a profession that had been too often confounded with the faults of its professors--faults that were curable, and that they would all, he hoped, live long enough to see cured. Then, turning to Miss Fountain, he said: ”And if I began by despising my business, and taking a small view of it, how should I ever hold sticks with my able compet.i.tors, who study it with zeal and admiration?”

Lucy. ”I don't quite understand all you have said, Mr. Dodd, but that last I think is unanswerable.”

Fountain. ”I am sure of it. As the Duke of Wellington said the other day in the House of Lords, 'That is a position I defy any n.o.ble lord to a.s.sault with success'--haw! ho!”

Mr. Talboys averted his attack. ”Pray, sir,” said he, with a sneer, ”may I ask, have nautical commanders a particular taste for education as well as science?”

”Not that I know of. If you mean me, I am hungry to learn, and I find few but what can teach me something, and what little I know I am willing to impart, sir; give and take.”

”It is the direction of your teaching that seems to me so singular.

Mathematics are horrible enough, and greatly to be avoided.”

”That is news to me.”

”On _terra firma,_ I mean.”

At this opening of the case Talboys versus Newton, Arthur shrugged his shoulders to Lucy and David, and went swiftly out as from the presence of an idiot. It was abominably rude. But, besides being ill-natured and a little shallow, Mr. Talboys was drawling out his words, and Arthur was sixteen--candid epoch, at which affectation in man or woman is intolerable to us; we get a little hardened to it long before sixty. Mr. Talboys bit his lip at this boyish impertinence, but he was too proud a man to notice it otherwise than by quietly incorporating the offender into his satire. ”But the enigma is why you read them with a stripling, of whose breeding we have just had a specimen--mathematics with a hob-ba-de-hoy? _Grand Dieu!_ Do pray tell us, Mr. Dodd, why you come to Font Abbey every day; is it really to teach Master Orson mathematics and manners?”

David did not sink into the earth as he was intended to.

”I come to teach him algebra and geometry, what little I know.”

”But your motive, Mr. Dodd?”

David looked puzzled, Lucy uneasy at seeing her guest badgered.

”Ask Miss Fountain why she thinks I do my best for Arthur,” said David, lowering his eyes.

Talboys colored and looked at Fountain.

”I think it must be out of pure goodness,” said Lucy, sweetly.

Mr. Talboys ignored her calmly. ”Pray enlighten us, Mr. Dodd. Now what is the real reason you walk a mile every day to do mathematics with that interesting and well-behaved juvenile?”

”You are very curious, sir,” said David, grimly, his ire rising unseen.

<script>