the sea.
To him this holiday was a glorious interlude in the regime of Miss
Quiney. His handsome father did not kiss him, but merely patted him on
the shoulder as he passed to his chair; and to Dick (though he would
have liked a kiss) it seemed just the right manly thing to do.

They talked merrily while Manasseh brought in the breakfast dishes--for
Master Dicky bread-and-milk followed by a simple steak of cod; a
bewildering succession of chowder, omelet, devilled kidneys, cold ham,
game pie, and fruit for the Collector, who professed himself keen-set as
a hunter, and washed down the viands with a tankard of cider.
He described his bathe, and promised Dicky that he should have his first
swimming lessons next summer. "I must talk about you to your Uncle
Harry. Craze for the sea? At your age if he saw a puddle of water he
must stick his toes in it. He's cruising just now, off South Carolina,
keeping a look-out for guarda-costas. He'll render an account of them,
you may be sure. He writes that he may be coming up Boston way any time
now. Oh, I can swim, but for diving you should see your Uncle Harry--
off the yard-arm--body taut as a whip--nothing like it in any of the old
Greeks' statues. Plenty of talk about bathing; but diving? No. In the
east, must go south to the Persian Gulf to see diving. The god Hermes
descending on Ogygia--if you could imagine that, you had Uncle Harry--
the shoot outwards, the delicate curve to a straight slant, heels rising
above rigid body while you counted, begad! holding your breath.
Then the plumb drop, like a gannet's--"

Dicky listened, glorious vistas opening before him. With the fruit
Manasseh brought coffee; and still the boy sat entranced while his
father chatted, glowing with exercise and enjoying a breakfast at every
point excellent.

It was in merest thoughtlessness, no doubt, that having arranged for
Dicky's morning walk, and after smoking a tobacco leaf rolled with an
art of which Manasseh possessed the secret, the Collector so timed his
message to the stables that his groom brought the horse Bayard around to
the Inn door just as the Sabbath bells began tolling for divine worship.
For as a sceptic he was careless rather than militant; ridiculing
religion only in his own set, and when occasion arose, and then without
fanaticism. For such piety as his mother's he had even a tolerant
respect; and in any event had too much breeding to affront of set
purpose the godly