Those letters were the chief pleasures in a harassing spring and
summer. It was well that practice had trained Sophia in the
qualities of a nurse, for Lucy was seldom available when Algernon
Dusautoy was at home; she was sure to be riding with him, or sitting
for her picture, or the good Vicar, afraid of her overworking
herself, insisted on her spending the evening at the vicarage.
She yielded, but not with an easy conscience, to judge by her
numerous apologies, and when Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy returned to
Oxford, she devoted herself with great assiduity to the invalid.
Her natural gifts were far more efficient than Sophy's laboriously-earned
gentleness, and her wonderful talent for prattling about nothing had
a revivifying influence, sparing much of the plaintive weariness which
accompanied that mournful descent of life's hill.
Albinia had reckoned on a rational Lucy until the Oxford term should
be over. She might have anticipated a failure in the responsions,
(who, in connexion with the Polysyllable, could mention being plucked
for the little-go?) but it was more than she did expect that his
rejection would send him home in sullen resentment resolved to punish
Oxford by the withdrawal of his august name. He had been quizzed by
the young, reprimanded by the old, plucked by the middle-aged, and he
returned with his mouth, full of sentences against blind, benighted
bigotry, and the futility of classical study, and of declamations, as
an injured orphan, against his uncle's disregard of the intentions of
his dear deceased parent, in keeping him from Bonn, Jena, Heidelberg,
or any other of the outlandish universities whose guttural names he
showered on the meek Vicar's desponding head.
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