No More Learning

People said shameful things about Mrs. Hauksbee. They did not know what
she was playing for. Mrs. Reiver fought, partly because Pluffles was
useful to her, but mainly because she hated Mrs. Hauksbee, and the
matter was a trial of strength between them. No one knows what Pluffles
thought. He had not many ideas at the best of times, and the few he
possessed made him conceited. Mrs. Hauksbee said:--"The boy must be
caught; and the only way of catching him is by treating him well. "

So she treated him as a man of the world and of experience so long as
the issue was doubtful. Little by little, Pluffles fell away from his
old allegiance and came over to the enemy, by whom he was made much of.
He was never sent on out-post duty after 'rickshaws any more, nor was
he given dances which never came off, nor were the drains on his
purse continued. Mrs. Hauksbee held him on the snaffle; and after his
treatment at Mrs.
Reiver's hands, he appreciated the change.

Mrs. Reiver had broken him of talking about himself, and made him
talk about her own merits. Mrs. Hauksbee acted otherwise, and won
his confidence, till he mentioned his engagement to the girl at Home,
speaking of it in a high and mighty way as a "piece of boyish folly. "
This was when he was taking tea with her one afternoon, and discoursing
in what he considered a gay and fascinating style.

Mrs. Hauksbee had seen an earlier generation of his stamp bud and
blossom, and decay into fat Captains and tubby Majors.

At a moderate estimate there were about three and twenty sides to that
lady's character. Some men say more. She began to talk to Pluffles after
the manner of a mother, and as if there had been three hundred years,
instead of fifteen, between them. She spoke with a sort of throaty
quaver in her voice which had a soothing effect, though what she said
was anything but soothing. She pointed out the exceeding folly, not to
say meanness, of Pluffles' conduct, and the smallness of his views. Then
he stammered something about "trusting to his own judgment as a man of
the world;" and this paved the way for what she wanted to say next. It
would have withered up Pluffles had it come from any other woman; but
in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauksbee put it, it only made
him feel limp and repentant--as if he had been in some superior kind of
church.