But I feared to be conspicuous.
Even as it was, we attracted only too much attention, with our pair
and that white elephant, the seventy-pounds-worth of claret-
coloured chaise.
Meanwhile I was ashamed to look Rowley in the face. The young
shaver had contrived to put me wholly in the wrong; he had cost me
a night's rest and a severe and healthful humiliation; and I was
grateful and embarrassed in his society. This would never do; it
was contrary to all my ideas of discipline; if the officer has to
blush before the private, or the master before the servant, nothing
is left to hope for but discharge or death. I hit upon the idea of
teaching him French; and accordingly, from Lichfield, I became the
distracted master, and he the scholar--how shall I say?
indefatigable, but uninspired. His interest never flagged. He
would hear the same word twenty times with profound refreshment,
mispronounce it in several different ways, and forget it again with
magical celerity. Say it happened to be STIRRUP. 'No, I don't
seem to remember that word, Mr. Anne,' he would say: 'it don't
seem to stick to me, that word don't.' And then, when I had told
it him again, 'Etrier!' he would cry. 'To be sure! I had it on
the tip of my tongue. Eterier!' (going wrong already, as if by a
fatal instinct).
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