"Yes, I know him, in a way--a clever youth, ambitious of a college education," said Mr. Wiley. "I have tried my best to dissuade him, but his mind is bent on rising in the world. Like little Christie, the wheelwright's son, who must be an artist."
"Why discourage young Musgrave? I heard from his father a few days ago that he had won a scholarship at Hampton worth fifty pounds a year, tenable for three years."
"That is news, indeed! Moxon has coached him well: I sent him to poor Moxon. He wanted to read with me, but--you understand--I could not exactly receive him while Lord Rafferty and Mr. Duffer are in my house. So I sent him to poor Moxon, who is glad of a pupil when he can get one."
"I wish Mr. Moxon better preferment. As for young Musgrave, he must have talent. I was driving through Brook yesterday, and I called at the manor-house. The mother is a modest person of much natural dignity. The son was out. I left a message that I should be glad to see him, and do something for him, if he would walk over to Fairfield."
"He will not come, I warrant," exclaimed Mr. Wiley. "He is a radical fellow, and would say, as soon as look at you, that he had no wish to be encumbered with patronage."
"He would not say so to Lady Latimer," cried Bessie Fairfax. Her voice rang clear as a bell, and quite startled the composed, refined atmosphere. Everybody looked at her with a smile. My lady exchanged a glance with her niece.
"Then young Musgrave is a friend of yours?" she said, addressing her little guest.
"We are cousins," was Bessie's unhesitating reply.
"I was not aware of it," remarked her grandfather drily.
Bessie was not daunted. Mrs. Musgrave was Mrs. Carnegie's elder sister. Young Musgrave and the young Carnegies called cousins, and while she was one of the Carnegies she was a cousin too. Besides, Harry Musgrave was the nephew of her father's second wife, and their comradeship dated from his visits to the rectory while her father was alive. She did not offer explanations, but in her own mind she peremptorily refused to deny or relinquish that cousinship. She went on eating in a dream of confusion, very rosy as to the cheeks and very downcast as to the eyes, but not at all ashamed. The little girls wondered with great amazement. Mr. Wiley did not relish his rebuke, and eyed Bessie with anything but charity. His bad genius set him expatiating further on the hazardous theme of ambition in youths of low birth and mean estate, with allusions to Brook and the wheelwright's shed that could not be misunderstood. Mr. Fairfax, observing his granddaughter, felt uneasy. Lady Latimer generalized to stop the subject. Suddenly said Bessie, flashing at the rector, and quoting Mr. Carnegie, "You attribute to class what belongs to character." Then, out of her own irrepressible indignation, she added, "Harry Musgrave is as good a gentleman as you are, and little Christie too, though he may be only a carpenter's son." (Which was not saying much for them, as Mr. Phipps remarked when he was told the story.)