The English Tutor Read Online Free PDF

the tower room, where Aunt. Bea was supervising the cleaning and rearrangement of furniture. They had none of them been in it for years, and Clancy and Brian spent much time exploring its treasures. It was still as it had been in their Grandfather ’ s time, and many of its contents were the best pieces in the whole house. Aunt Bea, looking with disapproval at a solid Victorian writing-desk, said she had never seen any one room so mixed in periods.
    “ But the desk will have to stay. He ’ ll be needing that, ” she said.
    “ To correct our exercises at, ” said Brian complacently. “ Will we do lessons up here, Aunt Bea? ”
    “ Of course not, ” she replied. “ You ’ ll do them in the schoolroom where you always have. This is the man ’ s own private sanctum and you ’ re not to come here disturbing him at all hours. ”
    “ Who on earth would want to? ” asked Clancy, with deep disgust at so much fuss and upheaval for a stranger. “ I hope he stops up here all the time, except when he ’ s on duty. We never had this set out for any of the others, Aunt Bea. ”
    Her aunt straightened one of the fine Persian rugs and peered closely at it for signs of moth.
    “ No, well, that was different, ” she said vaguely.
    “ Why? ” demanded Clancy truculently. “ Just because he ’ s a man? ”
    “ I expect so, ” sa i d Aunt Bea mildly. She was quite used to a world fashioned to accommodate the male. So was Clancy in her brief experience, but she was not prepared to truckle to a Sassenach.
    “ What ’ s his name, Aunt Bea? ” asked Brian, exploring the inside of a Buhl cabinet. “ And why wouldn ’ t Kilmallin tell us? ”
    “ I don ’ t know, dear. Some private joke of his own, I expect. ”
    Clancy was gazing out of one of the long narrow windows, thinking how high up they seemed in the tower room, and how plainly you could see Conn ’ s little farm on the other side of the loch.
    “ He ’ s probably got some frightful name like Ramsbottom or Featherstonehaugh, or perhaps it ’ s just something like Smelly or Wiffen, ” she said.
    Brian went into shrieks of laughter and they began to invent names until Aunt Bea told them both to go away and find something to do and let her get on with the cleaning.
    “ You might find Michael John, Clancy, and tell h im we shall want some easy chairs carried up here, ” she called after them.
    They went out into the garden to look for the garden boy, and Clancy kicked the turf disconsolately.
    “ He comes the day after tomorrow, ” she said, “ Kilmallin had a telegram this morning. If I ’ d only caught Micky-the - post, I could have found out what his name is. ”
    “ More fun not to know, then when he ’ s introduced we ’ ll just double up laughing. ” Brian, who was excited at all the fuss, regarded their tutor ’ s advent with no sense of dismay.
    “ There ’ s one thing, ” Clancy said, suddenly thoughtful, “ if he ’ s very old, those stairs to the tower room will finish him. I wonder if they ’ ve thought of that? There ’ s Michael John! ”
    Michael John, although just on sixty, was still called the garden boy, having worked at Kilmallin since he was twelve. He was quite bald and had been so ever since Clancy could remember.
    “ Aunt Bea wants some chairs taken up to the tower room, ” she said, and looked at him speculatively. “ Michael John, if you had to go up and down those stairs five or six times a day, wouldn ’ t you drop dead? ”
    “ Me? ” He scratched his head, then spat over his shoulder. “ Well now, I wouldn ’ t like to say. I ’ m not as old as I look, you know. ”
    He was devoted to the young O ’ Shanes, but Clancy was his favourite. A broth of a girl and worth ten of the boy.
    “ But if you were over sixty, or even seventy—wouldn ’ t it be too much for you? ”
    “ Ah, well, in that case, I ’ d like as not turn up me toes. ”
    “ Ramsbottom or Smelly is hardly likely to be seventy, is he? ”