“Your sentiments are most elevated, Valentine,” he said, “but your practice is democratical to an extent I should scarcely have looked for from your father’s son. I hope your friend the boatman at Eton is flourishing--the one you introduced to my daughter and me?”
“A boatman at Eton,” said the old lord, bending his brows, “introduced to Violet? You are dreaming, Pringle. I hope Val knows better than that.”
“Indeed I think it shows very fine feeling on Valentine’s part--this was one of nature’s noblemen, I gathered from what he said.”
“Nature’s fiddlestick!” exclaimed Lord Eskside, and the Tory gentlemen pricked up their ears. There was scarcely one of them who did not recollect, or find himself on the eve of recollecting, at that moment, that Val’s mother was “not a lady,” and that blood would out.
“I introduced him to you as a boatman, sir,” said Val, “not as anything else; though as for noblemen, Brown is worth twenty such as I have known with handles to their names. We get to estimate people by their real value at Eton, not by their accidental rank,” said the youth splendidly, at which Mr Pringle cried an ironical “Hear, hear!”
“Gently, gently, my young friend,” said Sir John. “Rank is a great power in this world, and not to be lightly spoken of; it does not become you to speak lightly of it; and it does not agree with your fine Tory principles, of which I warmly approve.”
“What have Tory principles to do with it?” said Val. “A fellow may be rowdy or a snob though he is a lord; and in that case at Eton, sir, whatever may happen at other places, we give him the cold shoulder. I don’t mean to set up Eton for an example,” said Val, gravely, at which there was a general roar.
“Bravo, bravo, my young Tory!” cried the Duke himself, no less a person, who on that night honoured Lord Eskside’s table. “In that respect, if you are right, Eton _is_ an example, let any one who pleases take the other side.”
“If Wales had been at Eton, and had been wowdy, we’d have sent him to Coventry as soon as look at him,” said Lord Hightowers, smoothing an infantile down on his upper lip.
“A very fine sentiment; but I don’t know if the antagonistic principle would work,” said Mr Pringle. “I am a Liberal, as everybody knows; but I don’t care about admitting boatmen to my intimacy, however much I may contemn an unworthy peer.”