thy manly exercises, to give thee, so soon as thou should'st
have learned to ride him----"

"A little horse?" said Dickie breathlessly; "oh, father, not a little
horse?" It was good to hear one's father laugh that big, jolly laugh--to
feel one's father's arm laid like that across one's shoulders.

The little horse turned round to look at them from his stall in the big
stables. It was really rather a big horse.

What colored horse would you choose--if a horse were to be yours for the
choosing? Dickie would have chosen a gray, and a gray it was.

"What is his name?" Dickie asked, when he had admired the gray's every
point, had had him saddled, and had ridden him proudly round the pasture
in his father's sight.

"We call him Rosinante," said his father, "because he is so fat," and he
laughed, but Dickie did not understand the joke. He had not read "Don
Quixote," as you, no doubt, have.

"I should like," said Dickie, sitting square on the gray, "to call him
Crutch. May I?"

"_Crutch?_" the father repeated.

"Because his paces are so easy," Dickie explained. He got off the horse
very quickly and came to his father. "I mean even a lame boy could ride
him. Oh! father, I am so happy!" he said, and burrowed his nose in a
velvet doublet, and perhaps snivelled a little. "I am so glad I am not
lame."

"Fancy-full as ever," said his father; "come, come! Thou'rt weak yet
from the fever. Be a man. Remember of what blood thou art. And thy
mother--she also hath a gift for thee--from thy grandfather. Hast thou
forgotten that? It hangs to the book learning. A reward--and thou hast
earned it."

"I've forgotten that, too," said Dickie. "You aren't vexed because I
forget? I can't help it, father."

"That I'll warrant thou cannot. Come, now, to thy mother. My little son!
The Earl of Scilly chid me but this summer for sparing the rod and
spoiling the child. But thy growth in all things bears out in what I
answered him. I said: 'The boys of our house, my lord, take that pride
in it that they learn of their own free will what many an earl's son
must be driven to with rods.' He took me. His own son is little better
than an idiot, and naught but the rod to blame for it, I verily
believe."

They found the lady-mother and her babe by a little fire in a wide
hearth.

"Our son comes to claim the guerdon of learning," the father said. And
the lady stood up with the babe in her arms.

"Call the nurse to take him," she said. But Dicki