“Papa, I wish you would not be so uncivil,” said Lucy, who had yet taken no part in their talk.
“I tell you he’s a fool all the same. I kept Kent’s Lane a-going for thirty years, and I ought to know. I’ve taught the best men in the town. Oxford fellows, and Cambridge fellows, and all sorts, have come to me for their mathematics, though I never had a degree; and I eat my dinner at two, and my tea at six as regular as clock-work all the time. That’s the way to do, if you mean to keep it up all your life, and lay by a little money, and leave the place to your son after you. If Jock had been older that’s what I should have made him do; that is the way to succeed in Kent’s Lane.”
There was a little pause after this, for Philip was a little angry too, and had not command for the moment of that soft word of which he made so determined a use; and at the same time he was resolved not to quarrel with Lucy’s father. He said, after a while, in as easy a tone as he could assume:
“I wish you would let me have Jock. He is old enough for school now, and whatever you want to do with him I could always begin his education; of course, you will give him every advantage--”
“I will give him as good as I had myself, Philip, and as you had. Do you think I am going to take Lucy’s money for that child? Not a penny! He shall be bred up according to his own rank in life; and by the time he’s a man, you’ll have grown too grand for the old place, and you can hand it over to him.”
Philip opened his eyes in spite of himself.
“Then Lucy will be a great lady,” he said, half laughing, “and her brother a little school-master in Kent’s Lane.”
Lucy, who was standing behind her father at the moment, began to make the most energetic signs of dissent. She made her mouth into a puckered circle of inarticulate “No-os,” and shook her head with vehement contradiction. Just below, and all unconscious of this pantomime, the old man grinned upon his visitor, delighted with the opportunity at once of declaring his intentions, and of inflicting a salutary snub.
“That is exactly what I intend,” he said, “you have hit it. Even if it hadn’t been just, it would have been a fine thing to do as an example; but it is _just_ as well. Is a fine lady any better than a poor school-master? Not a bit! Each one in the rank of life that is appointed, and one as good as another; that’s always been my principle. I wouldn’t have stepped out of my rank of life, or the habits of my rank of life, not if you had given me thousands for it; not, I promise you,” cried old Trevor, with a snarl, “for the sake of being asked to dinner here and there, as some folks are; but being in my own rank of life I thought myself as good as the king; and that’s why Lucy shall be a great lady, and her brother a little school-master, whether or not he’s in Kent’s Lane.”