hands by engaging at four hundred and fifty dollars per annum a private tutor, a Mr. Munro, personally selected by Richard from a list of eight applicants who had earlier been screened by his private secretary. Mr. Munro was charged to ensure that William was ready to enter St. Paul's by the age of twelve. William in - nnediately took to Mr.
Munro, whom he thought to be very old and very clever. He was, in fact, twenty - three and the possessor of a second - class honours, degree in English from the University of Edinburgh.
William quickly learned to ' read and write with facility but saved his real enthusiasm for figures. His only complaint was that, of the eight lessons taught every weekday, only one was arithmetic. William was quick to point out to his father that one - eighth of the working day was a small investment of time for someone who would one day be the president of a bank.
To compensate for his tutor's lack of foresight, William dogged the footsteps of his accessible relatives with demands for sums to be executed in his head. Grandmother Cabot, who had never been persuaded that the division of an integer by four would necessarily produce the same answer as its multiplication by one quarter, and indeed in her hands the two operations often did result in two different numbers, found herself speedily outclassed by her grandson, but Grandmother Kane, with some small leaning to cleverness, grappled manfully with vulgar fractions, compound interest and the division of eight cakes among nine children. 'Grandrnother,' said William, kindly but firmly, when she had failed to find the answer to his latest conundrum, 'you can buy me a slide - rule; then I won't have to bother you.'
She was astonished at her grandson's precocity, but she bought him one just the same, wondering if he really knew how to use the gadget. It was the first time in her life that Grandmother Kane had been known to take the easy way out of any problem.
Richard's problems began to gravitate eastwards. The chairman of his London branch died at his desk and Richard felt himself required in Lombard Street. He suggested to Anne that. she and William should accompany him to Europe, feeling that the education would not do the boy any harm: he could visit all the places about which Mr. Munro had so often talked. Anne, who had never been to Europe, was excited by the prospect, and filled three steamer trunks with elegant and expensive new clothes in which to confront the Old World. William considered it unfair of his mother not to allow him to take that equally essential aid to travel, his bicycle.
The Kanes travelled to New York by train to join the Aquitania bound for her voyage to Southampton. Anne was appalled by the sight of the immigrant street peddlers pushing their wares, and she was glad to be safely on board and resting in her cabin. William, on the other hand, was amazed by the size of New York; he had, until that moment, always imagined that his father's bank was the biggest building in America, if not the world. He wanted to buy a pink and yellow ice cream from a man all dressed in white and wearing a boater, but his father would not hear of it; in any case, Richard never carried small change.
William adored the great vessel on sight and quickly became friendly with the captain, who showed him all the secrets of the Cunard Steamships'
prima donna. Richard and Anne, who naturally sat at the captain's table, felt it necessary, before the ship had long left America, to apologise for the amount of the crew's time that their son was occupying.
'Not at all,' replied the white - bearded skipper. 'William and I are already good friends. I only wish I could answer all his questions about time, speed and distance. I have to be coached each night by the first engineer in the hope of first anticipating and then surviving the next day.'
The Aquitania sailed into the Solent to dock at Southampton after a six - day journey. William was reluctant to leave her, and tears would have been unavoidable had it not been for the magnificent sight of the Rolls - Royce Silver Ghost, waiting at the quayside complete with a chauffeur, ready to whisk them off to London. Richard decided on the spur of the moment that he would have the