his character, so
perfect a knowledge of the instrument, that all its movements--even the
eccentric ones--are anticipated by you, and provided for?"

The explanation was a little too long for the old lawyer to entreat
another repetition. Winking with the painful deprecation of a deaf man,
Mr. Thompson smiled urbanely, coughed conciliatingly, and said he was
afraid he could not affirm that much, though he was happily enabled to
say that Ripton had borne an extremely good character at school.

"I find," Sir Austin remarked, as sardonically he relaxed his inspecting
pose and mien, "there are fathers who are content to be simply obeyed.
Now I require not only that my son should obey; I would have him
guiltless of the impulse to gainsay my wishes--feeling me in him stronger
than his undeveloped nature, up to a certain period, where my
responsibility ends and his commences. Man is a self-acting machine. He
cannot cease to be a machine; but, though self-acting, he may lose the
powers of self-guidance, and in a wrong course his very vitalities hurry
him to perdition. Young, he is an organism ripening to the set mechanic
diurnal round, and while so he needs all the angels to hold watch over
him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit for what machinal duties
he may have to perform"...

Mr. Thompson agitated his eyebrows dreadfully. He was utterly lost. He
respected Sir Austin's estates too much to believe for a moment he was
listening to downright folly. Yet how otherwise explain the fact of his
excellent client being incomprehensible to him? For a middle-aged
gentleman, and one who has been in the habit of advising and managing,
will rarely have a notion of accusing his understanding; and Mr. Thompson
had not the slightest notion of accusing his. But the baronet's
condescension in coming thus to him, and speaking on the subject nearest
his heart, might well affect him, and he quickly settled the case in
favour of both parties, pronouncing mentally that his honoured client had
a meaning, and so deep it was, so subtle, that no wonder he experienced
difficulty in giving it fitly significant words.

Sir Austin elaborated his theory of the Organism and the Mechanism, for
his lawyer's edification. At a recurrence of the word "healthy" Mr.
Thompson caught him up:

"I apprehended you! Oh, I agree with you, Sir Austin! entirely! Allow me
to ring for my son Ripton. I think, if you condescend to examine him, you
will say that regu