Dick admitted with a sigh the eternal fitness of Mr. Wells's view; but, at the same time, he wondered what work on earth he could get which would allow him to earn his livelihood for the moment without interfering with the new and unpractical dignity of a Scholar of Durham College, Oxford. He had saved enough from his wages to eke out his Scholarship and enable him to live very economically at the University; but he must bridge over the time between now and October without trenching upon the little nest-egg laid by for the future.
As often happens, chance stepped in at the very nick of time to fill up the vacancy. At the Rectory that night Mr. Tradescant was talking over with his wife the question of a tutor for their eldest son, that prodigiously stupid boy of seventeen--a pure portent of ignorance--who was to go in for an army examination at the end of September.
'No, I won't send him away, from home, Clara,' the Rector broke out testily. 'It's no earthly use sending him away from home. He's far too lazy. Unless Arthur's under my own eye, he'll never work with anyone. Let me see, he comes home from Marlborough on the 28th. We must get somebody somehow before then who'll be able to give him lessons at home, if possible. If he has two months and more of perfect idleness he'll forget all he ever knew (which isn't much), and go up for examination with his mind a perfect blank--a _tabula rasa_, a sheet of white note-paper. And yet, unless we get a tutor down from town every day--which would run into money--I'm sure I don't know who the--person is we could possibly get to teach him.'
Mary Tudor was sitting by, and being a very young and inexperienced girl, she hadn't yet learnt that the perfect governess, when she hears her employers discuss their private affairs, should behave as though her ears wore only for ornament. (And Mary's, indeed, were extremely ornamental.) So she intervened with a suggestion--a thing no fully-trained young woman from a modern Agency would ever dream of doing.
'There's that Plantagenet boy, you know, Mrs. Tradescant,' she remarked, without bearing him the slightest grudge for his curious behaviour over the bookbinding incident. 'He's just got a Scholarship at Oxford to-day, Mr. Wells was telling me. I wonder if he would do? They say he's a very clever, well-read young fellow.'