u
will go into my study."

Into his study I went, where presently he came also, and I told him
the affair in as few words as I might. And he, knowing my hatred of
falsehood, questioned me not at all, but paced to and fro, I following
him with my eyes, and truly sorry that I had given him pain. And finally
he dismissed me, bidding me make it up with my cousin, which I was
nothing loth to do. What he said to Philip and his father I know not.
That evening we shook hands, though Philip's face was much swollen, and
my uncle smiled, and was even pleasanter than before, saying that boys
would be boys. But I think my Aunt Caroline could never wholly hide the
malice she bore me for what I had done that day.

When at last the visitors were gone, every face on the plantation wore a
brighter look. Harvey said: "God bless their backs, which is the only
part I ever care to see of their honours." And Willis gave us a supper
fit for a king. Mr. Lloyd and his lady were with us, and Mr. Carvel told
his old stories of the time of the First George, many of which I can even
now repeat: how he and two other collegians fought half a dozen Mohocks
in Norfolk Street, and fairly beat them; and how he discovered by chance
a Jacobite refugee in Greenwich, and what came of it; nor did he forget
that oft-told episode with Dean Swift. And these he rehearsed in such
merry spirit and new guise that we scarce recognized them, and Colonel
Lloyd so choked with laughter that more than once he had to be hit
between the shoulders.

CHAPTER V

"IF LADIES BE BUT YOUNG AND FAIR"

No boyhood could have been happier than mine, and throughout it, ever
present with me, were a shadow and a light. The shadow was my Uncle
Grafton. I know not what strange intuition of the child made me think
of him so constantly after that visit he paid us, but often I would wake
from my sleep with his name upon my lips, and a dread at my heart. The
light--need I say?--was Miss Dorothy Manners. Little Miss Dolly was
often at the Hall after that happy week we spent together; and her home,
Wilmot House, was scarce three miles across wood and field by our
plantation roads. I was a stout little fellow enough, and before I was
twelve I had learned to follow to hounds my grandfather's guests on my
pony; and Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Carvel when they shot on the duck points.
Ay, and what may surprise you, my dears, I was given a weak little toddy
off the noggin at night, while the gentlem