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"I just wish I could git discoorsin' wid that young feller," said old Felix, vindictively, "himself and his tassel in his cap." "Sure, man, 'twas no fault of his," said Mr. Polymathers, "and I can live widout a Degree, if that's all. Me betters did before me.
But it did not follow that he wanted to be a blacksmith all his days. Even if he had done so, he was sixteen, and consequently of an age to resent any prescribed calling, especially since he knew that the selection here had been made as the result of an unfavourable comparison of his abilities with those of another person. "Dan is no fool, mind you," Mr. Polymathers had said once.
There's Nicholas mopin' about like an ould hin that's lost her chuckens iver since you quit." Mr. Polymathers did stop quiet very quiet but he taught the boys no more. In fact, he did nothing except sit all day staring into the fire, as if he had lost something in it.
Polymathers, dazed and enfeebled and hope-bereft, came tramping on that long, long journey, day after weary day, under the scowling wintry sky, and against the ruffling blasts, back again across the breadth of Ireland.
The same little scene, dwindled at last into a mere form and ceremony, had taken place on every succeeding Saturday. Not that Mr. Polymathers did not feel he had grounds for more than merely formal demur. But he was then facing the steep hill of his ambition, and had sometimes to stoop as he climbed.
Polymathers, "to proceeding to the Degree of Baccalaureatus in Artibus, or In Artibus Baccalaureatus the ordo verborum is, I take it, immaterial, to judge by the transposition of initials in the case of ." "Faix, but it's the fine Latin you can be discoorsin' now, and his Riverence half-ways home," said Felix reproachfully. Mr.
Polymathers discoursed of right lines and angles and circles, and expounded the mysterious signification of certain Ah Bay Says. And he had thenceforward an unweariable pupil in Nicholas, companied, albeit with less ardent zeal, and at a slower rate of progress, by his elder brother, Dan. More general interest, however, continued to be taken in the stranger's classical attainments.
Polymathers had died surprisingly rich, not less than twenty-five pounds, seven shillings and threepence having been counted awestrickenly out of his leathern pouch. The ground rents of all Lisconnel did not reach to such a figure. It had been larger still before his disastrous expedition to the University; but it had never undergone any diminution so long as he abode under Felix O'Beirne's roof.
Polymathers himself meanwhile was perhaps dimly conscious that he had disappointed hopes, and failed to rise duly to the occasion; and this may have been why he slipped indoors, and fetched out a small book he had never produced before, bound in a dingy greenish blue, with a white paper label. "D'you know what that is, sir?" he questioned, rhetorically, handing it to Felix O'Beirne.
"Begor, then, it looks to be a wide house," said Felix, confining himself to the picture as a comprehensible point. "It's apt to be an oncommon fine place, sir, I should suppose." "You may say that, me man," said Mr. Polymathers, emphatically. "Not its match in the kingdom of Ireland. The home of literature and the haunt of science. And it's there I'll be, plase God, next October."
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