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Lucy pondered for a little without answering; and then she said, "Why should it be considered so necessary for a boy to be sent away from home?"

"Why!" cried Sir Tom, in astonishment; and then he added, laughingly, "It shows your ignorance, Lucy, to ask such a question. He must be sent to school, and there is an end of it. There are some things that are like axioms in Euclid, though you don't know very much about that—they are made to be acted upon, not to be discussed. A boy must go to school."

"But why?" said Lucy undaunted. "That is no answer." She was untrammelled by any respect for Euclid, and would have freely questioned the infallibility of an axiom, with a courage such as only ignorance possesses. She was thinking not only of Jock, but had an eye to distant contingencies, when there might be question of a still more precious boy. "God," she said, reverentially, "must have meant surely that the father and mother should have something to do in bringing them up."

"In the holidays, my dear," said Sir Tom; "that is what we are made for. Have you never found that out?"