ious and exacting,' said he. 'Now I shall be my own man
again, and feel rather more at my ease.'

CHAPTER XXXIX

My greatest source of uneasiness, in this time of trial, was my son, whom
his father and his father's friends delighted to encourage in all the
embryo vices a little child can show, and to instruct in all the evil
habits he could acquire--in a word, to 'make a man of him' was one of
their staple amusements; and I need say no more to justify my alarm on
his account, and my determination to deliver him at any hazard from the
hands of such instructors. I first attempted to keep him always with me,
or in the nursery, and gave Rachel particular injunctions never to let
him come down to dessert as long as these 'gentlemen' stayed; but it was
no use: these orders were immediately countermanded and overruled by his
father; he was not going to have the little fellow moped to death between
an old nurse and a cursed fool of a mother. So the little fellow came
down every evening in spite of his cross mamma, and learned to tipple
wine like papa, to swear like Mr. Hattersley, and to have his own way
like a man, and sent mamma to the devil when she tried to prevent him.
To see such things done with the roguish naivete of that pretty little
child, and hear such things spoken by that small infantile voice, was as
peculiarly piquant and irresistibly droll to them as it was inexpressibly
distressing and painful to me; and when he had set the table in a roar he
would look round delightedly upon them all, and add his shrill laugh to
theirs. But if that beaming blue eye rested on me, its light would
vanish for a moment, and he would say, in some concern, 'Mamma, why don't
you laugh? Make her laugh, papa--she never will.'

Hence was I obliged to stay among these human brutes, watching an
opportunity to get my child away from them instead of leaving them
immediately after the removal of the cloth, as I should always otherwise
have done. He was never willing to go, and I frequently had to carry him
away by force, for which he thought me very cruel and unjust; and
sometimes his father would insist upon my letting him remain; and then I
would leave him to his kind friends, and retire to indulge my bitterness
and despair alone, or to rack my brains for a remedy to this great evil.

But here again I must do Mr. Hargrave the justice to acknowledge that I
never saw him laugh at the child's misdemeanours, nor heard him utter