Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale by R. D. Blackmore

Author:R. D. Blackmore [Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXXIII.

KIT.

In the meanwhile, Mrs. Luke Sharp was growing very anxious about her son, and only child and idol, Christopher. Not that there was anything at all amiss with his bodily health, so far at least as she could see; but that he seemed so unsettled in his mind, so absent and preoccupied, and careless even of his out-door sports, which at one time were his only care. Of course, at this time of year, there was very little employment for the gun, but there was plenty of fishing to be got, such as it was, round Oxford, and it must be a very bad time of year when there are no rats for little terriers, and badgers for the larger tribe. Yet none of these things now possessed the proper charm for Christopher. Wherever he was, he always seemed to be wanting to be somewhere else; and, like a hydrophobic dog, he hated to be looked at; while (after the manner of a cat assisted lately by Lucina) he ran up into his own loft, when he thought there was nobody watching.

Well arranged as all this might be, and keen, and self-satisfactory, there was something keener, and not very easy to satisfy, looking after it. The love of a mother may fairly be trusted to outwit any such calf-love as was making a fool of this unfledged fellow, fresh from the feather-bed of a private school.

Considering whence he came, and how he had been brought up and pampered, Kit Sharp was a very fine young fellow, and—thanks to his liking for gun and rod—he could scarcely be called a milksop. Still he was only a boy in mind, and in manner quite unformed and shy; his father (for reasons of his own) having always refused to enter him at any of the colleges. He might perhaps have shaped his raw material by the noblest models, if he had been admitted into the society of undergraduates. But the members of the University entertained in those days, and probably still entertain, a just and inevitable contempt for all the non-togati. Kit Sharp had made some fluttering overtures of the flag of friendship towards one or two random undergraduates who had a nice taste for ratting; he had even dined and wined, once or twice, in a not ignoble college; and had been acknowledged to know a meerschaum as well as if he owned a statute-book. But the boy always fancied, perhaps through foolish and shy pride on his part, that these most hospitable and kind young men had their jokes to themselves about him. Perhaps it was so; but in pure goodwill. Take him for all in all, and allow for the needs of his situation—which towards the third year grow imperative—and the Oxford undergraduate is as good as any other young gentleman.

But Kit Sharp being exceedingly proud, and most secretive of his pride, would not long receive, without return, good hospitality. And this alone, without other suspicions, would have set bounds to his dealing with a race profusely hospitable.

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