Thus with various diversions and occupations his school days passed until
he was about sixteen years old, when he was suddenly called away from his
academic studies.
It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had been unnoticed
all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him on
to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though little
Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might. Pen had
made a sad blunder or two, when the awful chief broke out upon him.
"Pendennis, sir," he said, "your idleness is incorrigible and your
stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your
family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country.
If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be
really what moralists have represented, what a prodigious quantity of
future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed!
Miserable trifler! A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek play cheats
the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who cheats his
parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neighbour. A man
who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his crime at the
gallows. And it is not such a one that I pity, for he will be deservedly
cut off, but his maddened and heartbroken parents, who are driven to a
premature grave by his crimes, or, if they live, drag on a wretched and
dishonoured old age.
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