“It’s very likely, though, that you’ll be able to study a little, and a fellow as clever as you are won’t be behind long,” went on Paul, gravely. Carl was vastly pleased at the compliment.
“What makes you think I’m—clever?” he asked presently.
“Why, you _are_,” answered Paul in a surprised tone, and then with a rather sad little laugh, he added, “I wish I knew one tenth—one _hundredth_ as much as you do. I’m a dunce, I don’t know as much as Lottie does—not nearly.”
In the face of this humble remark, Carl remembered rather uncomfortably the innumerable jibes he had directed at his cousin’s ignorance.
“Well, you can teach yourself a lot,” he said a little patronizingly. Paul laughed.
“I try to. But I—I can’t even read decently, and it takes the dickens of a long time.”
“Well, not enough to boast of. I never went to school in my life. A long time ago my mother or somebody must have taught me something, and then I picked up what I could here and there. There was an old fellow I knew years ago,—he was a passenger on a little coast trading vessel—we were going from Marseilles down to the south of Italy, and on the voyage, which was pretty slow,—because we sometimes stayed for two or three days at different ports,—he taught me a few things. And then I learned to read French pretty well, and a little Italian, and a young Englishman—a college fellow, who’d given up studying for the ministry and run away to sea—even taught me some Latin, though what under Heaven he thought I’d do with it I don’t know. He was a funny one,” said Paul, chuckling reminiscently, “a thin little chap, with a long nose. He used to say that every gentleman should have a knowledge of the classics, and you’d see him washing the deck, with copy of some old Latin fellow’s poetry sticking out of his back pocket.”
“What did he go to sea for?” inquired Carl; for the first time he had deigned to listen to some of Paul’s adventures, and he found himself getting very much interested.
“I don’t know. His uncle was a lord or something—at least he told me so, and I daresay it was true. He said he was a younger son, though what that had to do with it I don’t know. Anyway it seemed to be an awfully important thing for me to remember. He wanted to make something of himself, he said. I told him he’d do better as—well, anything but a cabin boy, or deck hand or whatever he was. But he said he loved the sea—though he was just about the worst sailor I ever saw.”