new friends whom this happy day had
brought him. The next morning he was up and watching long before the
house was astir, longing to see that fair lady and her children again;
and only fearful lest their welcome of the past night should in any way
be withdrawn or altered. But presently little Beatrix came out into the
garden, and her mother followed, who greeted Harry as kindly as before
and listened while he told her the histories of the house, which he had
been taught in the old lord's time, and to which she listened with great
interest; and then he told her, with respect to the night before, that he
understood French and thanked her for her protection.

"Do you?" says she, with a blush; "then, sir, you shall teach me
and Beatrix."

And she asked him many more questions regarding himself, to which she
received brief replies, the substance of which was afterward amplified
into certain facts concerning the past of the orphan boy, which it is
well to note here and now.

It seemed that in former days, in a little cottage in the village of
Ealing, near to London, for some time had dwelt an old French refugee, by
name Mr. Pastoureau, one of those whom the persecution of the Huguenots
by the French king had brought over to England. With this old man lived a
little lad, who went by the name of Henry Thomas, but who was no other
than Henry Esmond. He remembered to have lived in another place a short
time before, near to London, too, amongst looms and spinning wheels, and
a great deal of psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of
Frenchmen.

There he had a dear, dear friend, who died, and whom he called Aunt.
She used to visit him in his dreams sometimes; and her face, though it
was homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs.
Pastoureau, Bon Papa Pastoureau's new wife, who came to live with him
after aunt went away. And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be
called, lived Uncle George, who was a weaver, too, but used to tell
Harry that he was a little gentleman, and that his father was a
captain, and his mother an angel.

When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was
embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and shake his head. He had a little
room where he always used to preach and sing hymns out of his great old
nose. Little Harry did not like the preaching; he liked better the fine
stories which aunt used to tell him. Bon Papa's new wife never told him
pretty stories; s