“He’s awful, of course,” they would say. “But we were young, once, ourselves!”
Rex, so far, committed no breaches of discipline. When alone with Billy there were signs that his polish was, after all, merely skin-deep, and was even wearing off in places; but with the other members of the family he maintained a calm correctness of demeanour that the twins found almost painful. He drilled painstakingly, in a solid fashion; the twins sighed over his heavy movements, even while they rebuked Billy, who loved to prance through his “physical jerks” like the light-footed elf he was. To lessons Rex brought a dull hatred that somewhat astonished the twins, since it was evident from the first that he was by no means deficient in brains. Only when he dealt with figures was he at all happy, and as Jean put it, resentfully, “he just wallows in sums.” Jean herself having a constitutional dislike to adding even two and two, mathematics were always left to her twin, so that her share of the lessons was rather wearying.
“There must be a reason for it,” she puzzled, one day. “I wonder if he had very frowsy governesses.”
They did, and the boy’s heavy eyes kindled as he was gradually induced to describe his former lessons. His governess had been one of the old school, severe and correct; she exacted absolute stillness and obedience, and led the weary feet of her small pupil along the dullest paths of old-fashioned learning. He used to learn by heart long passages of heavy history and geography books and repeat them to her with very little idea of their meaning. In the same way he would learn poetry, and repeat it, parrot-fashion. All lessons were beastly, he said, but poetry was not quite so beastly as others, because it had rhymes, and was not quite so hard to learn. But it never meant anything. You could tell a story better without worrying about rhymes, if that was all you wanted.
“But poetry’s gorgeous!” expostulated Billy, open-eyed.
“Aw, what’s gorgeous?” Rex demanded. “I never saw any sense in it.”
“But it is. Look at fighting yarns like ‘Horatius,’ and things like that!”
“Oh, I know that ‘Horatius’ thing. It’s one of the worst,” declared Rex, loftily—“there’s such miles of it.”
It was lesson-time, and they were all in the schoolroom. Rex began at once, obediently.