The Channings. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ boys raised “three groans for Jack Ketch,” and then rushed away by the other entrance to their own dinners. The fact was, the porter had brought ill will upon himself, through his cross-grained temper. He had no right whatever to interfere between the boys and the cloisters; it was not his place to do so. The king’s scholars knew this; and, being spirited king’s scholars, as they were, would not stand it.

      “Tom,” said Arthur Channing, “don’t say anything at home about the organ. Wait and see if I get it, first. Charley did not hear; he was ordered off with the juniors.”

      CHAPTER VIII. – THE ASSISTANT-ORGANIST

      Things often seem to go by the rule of contrary. Arthur returned to the office at two o’clock, brimful of the favour he was going to solicit of Mr. Galloway; but he encountered present disappointment. For the first time for many weeks, Mr. Galloway did not make his appearance in the office at all; he was out the whole of the afternoon. Roland Yorke, to whom Arthur confided the plan, ridiculed it.

      “Catch me taking such a task upon myself! If I could play the organ like a Mendelssohn, and send the folks into ecstasies, I’d never saddle myself with the worry of doing it morning and afternoon. You’ll soon be sick of the bargain, Channing.”

      “I should never be sick of it, if I did it for nothing: I am too fond of music for that. And it will be a very easy way of earning money.”

      “Not so easy as making your mother stump up,” was the reply. And if your refinement turns from the expression, my good reader, I am sorry you should have to read it; but it is what Mr. Roland Yorke said. “I had a regular scene with Lady Augusta this morning. It’s the most unreasonable thing in the world, you know, Channing, for her to think I can live without money, and so I told her—said I must and would have it, in fact.”

      “Did you get it?”

      “Of course I did. I wanted to pay Simms, and one or two more trifles that were pressing; I was not going to have the fellow here after me again. I wish such a thing as money had never been invented!”

      “You may as well wish we could live without eating.”

      “So I do, sometimes—when I go home, expecting a good dinner, and there’s only some horrid cold stuff upon the table. There never was a worse housekeeper than Lady Augusta. It’s my belief, our servants must live like fighting cocks; for I am sure the bills are heavy enough, and we don’t get the benefit of them.”

      “What made you so late this afternoon?” asked Arthur.

      “I went round to pay Simms, for one thing; and then I called in upon Hamish, and stayed talking with him. Wasn’t he in a sea of envy when I told him I had been scoring off that Simms! He wished he could do the same.”

      “Hamish does not owe anything to Simms!” cried Arthur, with hasty retort.

      “Doesn’t he?” laughed Roland Yorke. “That’s all you know about it. Ask him yourself.”

      “If you please, sir,” interposed Mr. Jenkins, at this juncture, “I shall soon be waiting for that paper. Mr. Galloway directed me to send it off by post.”

      “Bother the paper!” returned Roland; but, nevertheless, he applied himself to complete it. He was in the habit of discoursing upon private topics before Jenkins without any reserve, regarding him as a perfect nonentity.

      When Arthur went home in the evening, he found Mr. Galloway sitting with his father. “Well,” cried the proctor, as Arthur entered, “and who has been at the office this afternoon?”

      “No one in particular, sir. Oh yes, there was, though—I forgot. The dean looked in, and wanted to see you.”

      “What did he want?”

      “He did not say, sir. He told Jenkins it would do another time.” Arthur left his father and Mr. Galloway together. He did not broach the subject that was uppermost in his heart. Gifted with rare delicacy of feeling, he would not speak to Mr. Galloway until he could see him alone. To prefer the request in his father’s presence might have caused Mr. Galloway more trouble in refusing it.

      “I can’t think what has happened to Arthur this evening!” exclaimed one of them. “His spirits are up to fever heat. Tell us what it is, Arthur?”

      Arthur laughed. “I hope they will not be lowered to freezing point within the next hour; that’s all.”

      When he heard Mr. Galloway leaving, he hastened after him, and overtook him in the Boundaries.

      “I wanted to say a few words to you, sir, if you please?”

      “Say on,” said Mr. Galloway. “Why did you not say them indoors?”

      “I scarcely know how I shall say them now, sir; for it is a very great favour that I have to ask you, and you may be angry, perhaps, at my thinking you might grant it.”

      “You want a holiday, I suppose?”

      “Oh no, sir; nothing of that sort. I want—”

      “Well?” cried Mr. Galloway, surprised at his hesitation; but now that the moment of preferring the request had come, Arthur shrank from doing it.

      “Could you allow me, sir—would it make very much difference—to allow me—to come to the office an hour earlier, and remain in it an hour later?” stammered Arthur.

      “What for?” exclaimed Mr. Galloway, with marked surprise.

      “I have had an offer made me, sir, to take the cathedral organ at week-day service. I should very much like to accept it, if it could be managed.”

      “Why, where’s Jupp?” uttered Mr. Galloway.

      “Jupp has resigned. He is ill, and is going out for his health. I’ll tell you how it all happened,” went on Arthur, losing diffidence now that he was fairly launched upon his subject. “Of course, this failure of the suit makes a great difference to our prospects at home; it renders it incumbent upon us to do what we can to help—”

      “Why does it?” interrupted Mr. Galloway. “It may make a difference to your future ease, but it makes none to your present means.”

      “There is money wanted in many ways, sir; a favourable termination to the suit was counted upon so certainly. For one thing, it is necessary that my father should try the German baths.”

      “Of course, he must try them,” cried Mr. Galloway.

      “But it will cost money, sir,” deprecated Arthur. “Altogether, we have determined to do what we can. Constance has set us the example, by engaging herself as daily governess at Lady Augusta’s. She goes on Monday.”

      “Very commendable of her,” observed the proctor, who loved a gossip like any old woman. “I hope she’ll not let those two unruly girls worry her to death.”

      “And I was casting about in my mind, this morning, what I could do to help, when I met the organist,” proceeded Arthur. “He chanced to say that he could find no one to take the music copying. Well, sir, I thought it over, and at one o’clock I went to ask him to give it to me. I found him at the organ, in a state of vexation. Jupp had resigned his post, and Mr. Williams had no one to replace him. The long and the short of it is, sir, that he offered it to me.”

      “And СКАЧАТЬ