“Yes, school is the approved remedy for being too clever,” said Mr. Ogilvie.  “You are wise.  It is a pity, but it will be all the better for him by-and-by.”

“And the elder ones will take care the seasoning is not too severe,” said Caroline, with a resolution she could hardly have shown if this had been her first launch of a son.  “But it was about Bobus that I wanted to consult you.  His uncle thinks him headstrong and conceited, if not lazy.”

“Lazy he is certainly not.”

“I knew you would say so, but the Colonel cannot enter into his wish to have more physical science and less classics, and will not hear of his going to Germany, which is what he wishes, though I am sure he is too young.”

“He ought not to go there till his character is much more formed.”

“What do you think of his going on here?”

“That’s a temptation I ought to resist.  He will soon have outstripped the other boys so that I could not give him the attention he needs, and besides the being with other boys, more his equals, would be invaluable to him.”

“Well, he is rather bumptious.”

“Nothing is worse for a lad of that sort than being cock of the walk.  It spoils him often for life.”

“I know exactly the sort of man you mean, always liking to lay down the law and talking to women instead of men, because they don’t argue with him.  No, Bobus must not come to that, and he is too young to begin special training.  Will you talk to him, Mr. Ogilvie?  You know if my horse is not convinced I may bring him to the water, but it will be all in vain.”

They had reached the outside of the window of the dining-room, where the school-boys were learning their lessons for the morrow.  Bobus was sitting at the table with a small lamp so shaded as to concentrate the light on him and to afford it to no one else.  On the floor was a servant’s flat candlestick, mounted on a pile of books, between one John sprawling at full length preparing his Virgil, the other cross-legged, working a sum with ink from a doll’s tea-cup placed in the candlestick, and all the time there was a wonderful mumbling accompaniment, as there always was between those two.

“I say, what does pulsum come from?”

“What a brute this is of a fraction!  Skipjack, what will go in 639 and 852?”

“Pulsum, a pulse-—volat, flies.  Eh!  Three’ll do it.  Or common measure it at once.”

“Bother common measure.  The threes in—-”

“Fama, fame; volat, flies; pulsum, the pulse; cecisse, to have ceased; paternis regnis, in the paternal kingdom.  I say wouldn’t that rile Perkins like fun?”

“The threes in seven-—two—-in eighteen-—”

“I say, Johnny, is pulsum from pulco?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Bobus, is it pulco, pulxi, pulsum?”

“Pulco-—I make an ass of myself,” muttered Bobus.

“O murder,” groaned Johnny, “it has come out 213.”