“I look at those boys,” the philosopher was accustomed to say, “with a perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant accident of their birth from all consideration; and I find them below the average in every respect.  The only excuse which a poor gentleman has for presuming to exist in the nineteenth century, is the excuse of extraordinary ability.  My boys have been addle-headed from infancy.  If I had any capital to give them, I should make Frank a butcher, Cecil a baker, and Arthur a grocer—­those being the only human vocations I know of which are certain to be always in request.  As it is, I have no money to help them with; and they have no brains to help themselves.  They appear to me to be three human superfluities in dirty jackets and noisy boots; and, unless they clear themselves off the community by running away, I don’t myself profess to see what is to be done with them.”

Fortunately for the boys, Mr. Vanstone’s views were still fast imprisoned in the ordinary prejudices.  At his intercession, and through his influence, Frank, Cecil, and Arthur were received on the foundation of a well-reputed grammar-school.  In holiday-time they were mercifully allowed the run of Mr. Vanstone’s paddock; and were humanized and refined by association, indoors, with Mrs. Vanstone and her daughters.  On these occasions, Mr. Clare used sometimes to walk across from his cottage (in his dressing-gown and slippers), and look at the boys disparagingly, through the window or over the fence, as if they were three wild animals whom his neighbor was attempting to tame.  “You and your wife are excellent people,” he used to say to Mr. Vanstone.  “I respect your honest prejudices in favor of those boys of mine with all my heart.  But you are so wrong about them—­you are indeed!  I wish to give no offense; I speak quite impartially—­but mark my words, Vanstone:  they’ll all three turn out ill, in spite of everything you can do to prevent it.”

In later years, when Frank had reached the age of seventeen, the same curious shifting of the relative positions of parent and friend between the two neighbors was exemplified more absurdly than ever.  A civil engineer in the north of England, who owed certain obligations to Mr. Vanstone, expressed his willingness to take Frank under superintendence, on terms of the most favorable kind.  When this proposal was received, Mr. Clare, as usual, first shifted his own character as Frank’s father on Mr. Vanstone’s shoulders—­and then moderated his neighbor’s parental enthusiasm from the point of view of an impartial spectator.

“It’s the finest chance for Frank that could possibly have happened,” cried Mr. Vanstone, in a glow of fatherly enthusiasm.

“My good fellow, he won’t take it,” retorted Mr. Clare, with the icy composure of a disinterested friend.

“But he shall take it,” persisted Mr. Vanstone.

“Say he shall have a mathematical head,” rejoined Mr. Clare; “say he shall possess industry, ambition, and firmness of purpose.  Pooh! pooh! you don’t look at him with my impartial eyes.  I say, No mathematics, no industry, no ambition, no firmness of purpose.  Frank is a compound of negatives—­and there they are.”