r learned them, but they had
come to him naturally as his English had done. His mother, never an
energetic woman, had felt the heat of the climate much, and had never
been, or declared she had never been--which came to the same
thing--capable of taking any exercise, and, save for a drive in her
carriage in the cool of the evening, seldom left the house.

Edgar had, from the first, been left greatly to his own devices. His
father was a busy man, and, as long as the boy was well and strong, was
content that he should spend his time as he chose, insisting only on his
taking lessons for two hours a day from the Italian governess, who
taught his twin sisters, who were some eighteen months younger than
himself; after that he was free to wander about the house or to go into
the streets, provided that one of the grooms, either Hammed or Abdul,
accompanied him. When at thirteen he was sent to England to stay with an
uncle and to go through a couple of years' schooling, he entered a world
so wholly unlike that in which he himself had been brought up, that for
a time he seemed completely out of his element.

His father had an excellent library, and during the heat of the day the
boy had got through a great deal of reading, and was vastly better
acquainted with standard English writers than his cousins or
school-fellows, but of ordinary school work he was absolutely ignorant,
and at first he was much laughed at for his deficiencies in Latin and
Greek. The latter he never attempted, but his knowledge of Italian
helped him so greatly with his Latin that in a very few months he went
through class after class, until he was fully up to the level of other
boys of his age. His uncle lived in the suburbs of London, and he went
with his cousins to St. Paul's. At that time prize-fighting was the
national sport, and his father had, when he sent him over, particularly
requested his uncle to obtain a good teacher for him.

"Whether Edgar will stay out here for good, Tom, I cannot say, but
whether he does or not, I should like him to be able to box well. In
England every gentleman in our day learns to use his fists, while out
here it is of very great advantage that a man should be able to do so.
We have a mixed population here, and a very shady one. Maltese, Greeks,
Italians, and French, and these probably the very scum of the various
seaports of the Mediterranean, therefore to be able to hit quick and
straight from the shoulder may well save