s living hand in
mine to squeeze; feeling him scarcely yet the living man I had sought,
and with no great warmth of feeling. His hand was very moist. Often I
said, 'Dear father!--Papa, I'm so glad at last,' in answer to his
short-breathed 'Richie, my little lad, my son Richmond! You found me out;
you found me!' We were conscious that his thick case of varnished
clothing was against us. One would have fancied from his way of speaking
that he suffered from asthma. I was now gifted with a tenfold power of
observation, and let nothing escape me.

Temple, sitting opposite, grinned cheerfully at times to encourage our
spirits; he had not recovered from his wonderment, nor had I introduced
him. My father, however, had caught his name. Temple (who might as well
have talked, I thought) was perpetually stealing secret glances of
abstracted perusal at him with a pair of round infant's eyes, sucking his
reflections the while. My father broke our silence.

'Mr. Temple, I have the honour,' he said, as if about to cough; 'the
honour of making your acquaintance; I fear you must surrender the hope of
making mine at present.'

Temple started and reddened like a little fellow detected in straying
from his spelling-book, which was the window-frame. In a minute or so the
fascination proved too strong for him; his eyes wandered from the window
and he renewed his shy inspection bit by bit as if casting up a column of
figures.

'Yes, Mr. Temple, we are in high Germany,' said my father.

It must have cost Temple cruel pain, for he was a thoroughly gentlemanly
boy, and he could not resist it. Finally he surprised himself in his
stealthy reckoning: arrived at the full-breech or buttoned waistband,
about half-way up his ascent from the red silk stocking, he would pause
and blink rapidly, sometimes jump and cough.

To put him at his ease, my father exclaimed, 'As to this exterior,' he
knocked his knuckles on the heaving hard surface, 'I can only affirm that
it was, on horseback--ahem! particularly as the horse betrayed no
restivity, pronounced perfect! The sole complaint of our interior
concerns the resemblance we bear to a lobster. Human somewhere, I do
believe myself to be. I shall have to be relieved of my shell before I
can at all satisfactorily proclaim the fact. I am a human being, believe
me.'

He begged permission to take breath a minute.

'I know you for my son's friend, Mr. Temple: here is my son, my boy,
Harry Lepel Richmond Ro