The dogs were deprived of their accustomed
runs; the horses had to be taken out for exercise by the groom; and
the various and innumerable animals about the place missed their doses
of alternate petting and teasing, all because Master Harry had chosen
to shut himself up in his study.
The mother of the young man very soon discovered that her son was
not devoting his hours of seclusion in that extraordinary museum of
natural history to making trout-flies, stuffing birds and arranging
pinned butterflies in cases, as was his custom. These were not the
occupations which now kept Master Harry up half the night. When she
went in of a morning, before he was up, she found that he had been
covering whole sheets of paper with careful copying out of passages
taken at random from the volumes beside him. A Latin grammar was
ordinarily on the table--a book which the young gentleman had brought
back from school free from thumb-marks. Occasionally a fencing-foil
lay among these evidences of study, while the small aquaria, the cases
of stuffed animals with fancy backgrounds and the numerous bird-cages
had been thrust aside to give fair elbow-room.
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Trelyon to herself with much
satisfaction--"perhaps, after all, that good little girl has given him
a hint about Parliament, and he is preparing himself."
A few days of this seclusion, however, began to make the mother
anxious; and so one morning she went into his room.
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