Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and
absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the
outlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing
upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of
observation: if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever
and anon, it returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it
meant: I wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never
failed to exhibit on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment,
namely, my weekly visit to Morton school; and still more was I
puzzled when, if the day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or
rain, or high wind, and his sisters urged me not to go, he would
invariably make light of their solicitude, and encourage me to
accomplish the task without regard to the elements.
"Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her," he would say:
"she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of
snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and
elastic;--better calculated to endure variations of climate than
many more robust."
And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little
weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur
would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the
reverse was a special annoyance.
One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I
really had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I
sat reading Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls.
As I exchanged a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his
way: there I found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful
blue eye. How long it had been searching me through and through,
and over and over, I cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold,
I felt for the moment superstitious--as if I were sitting in the
room with something uncanny.
"Jane, what are you doing?"
"Learning German."
"I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee."
"You are not in earnest?"
"In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why."
He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was
himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to
forget the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a
pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements, and
so fix them thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for
some time between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me
because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three.
Would I do him this favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the
sacrifice long, as it wanted now barely three months to his
departure.