No man of fifty , who has read the classical myths in his youth , can possibly understand my merit as a re-inventor and improver of them . '' `` All this may be very true , '' said Primrose , `` but come you must ! My father will not open his book , nor will mamma open the piano , till you have given us some of your nonsense , as you very correctly call it . So be a good boy , and come along . '' Whatever he might pretend , the student was rather glad than otherwise , on second thoughts , to catch at the opportunity of proving to Mr. Pringle what an excellent faculty he had in modernizing the myths of ancient times . Until twenty years of age , a young man may , indeed , be rather bashful about showing his poetry and his prose ; but , for all that , he is pretty apt to think that these very productions would place him at the tip-top of literature , if once they could be known . Accordingly , without much more resistance , Eustace suffered Primrose and Periwinkle to drag him into the drawing-room . It was a large handsome apartment , with a semicircular window at one end , in the recess of which stood a marble copy of Greenough 's Angel and Child . On one side of the fireplace there were many shelves of books , gravely but richly bound . The white light of the astrallamp , and the red glow of the bright coal-fire , made the room brilliant and cheerful ; and before the fire , in a deep arm-chair , sat Mr. Pringle , looking just fit to be seated in such a chair , and in such a room . He was a tall and quite a handsome gentleman , with a bald brow ; and was always so nicely dressed , that even Eustace Bright never liked to enter his presence , without at least pausing at the threshold to settle his shirt-collar . But now , as Primrose had hold of one of his hands , and Periwinkle of the other , he was forced to make his appearance with a rough-and-tumble sort of look , as if he had been rolling all day in a snow-bank . And so he had . Mr. Pringle turned towards the student , benignly enough , but in a way that made him feel how uncombed and unbrushed he was , and how uncombed and unbrushed , likewise , were his mind and thoughts . `` Eustace , '' said Mr. Pringle , with a smile , `` I find that you are producing a great sensation among the little public of Tanglewood , by the exercise of your gifts of narrative . Primrose here , as the little folks choose to call her , and the rest of the children , have been so loud in praise of your stories , that Mrs. Pringle and myself are really curious to hear a specimen . It would be so much the more gratifying to myself , as the stories appear to be an attempt to render the fables of classical antiquity into the idiom of modern fancy and feeling . At least , so I judge from a few of the incidents , which have come to me at second hand . '' `` You are not exactly the auditor that I should have chosen , sir , '' observed the student , `` for fantasies of this nature . '' `` Possibly not , '' replied Mr. Pringle .
`` I suspect , however , XXXXX a young author 's most useful critic is precisely the one whom he would be least apt to choose .
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