ing of a comrade to
the fencing master. The end of this was that, in real or pretended
return for the loan of Saviolo's book, the Frenchman gave Philip a
course of instruction and practice in each of his three arts.

To these the boy added, without need of a teacher, the ability to
shoot, both with gun and with pistol. I suppose it was from being so
much with his mother, between whom and himself there must have existed
the most complete devotion, that notwithstanding his manly and
scholarly accomplishments, his heart, becoming neither tough like the
sportsman's nor dry like the bookworm's, remained as tender as a
girl's--or rather as a girl's is commonly supposed to be. His mother's
death, due to some inward ailment of which the nature was a problem to
the doctors, left him saddened but too young to be embittered. And
this was the Philip Winwood--grave and shy from having been deprived
too much of the company of other boys, but with certain mental and
bodily advantages of which too much of that company would have
deprived him--who was taken into the house of the Faringfields in the
Summer of 1763.

The footing on which he should remain there was settled the very
morning after his arrival. Mr. Faringfield, a rigid and prudent man,
but never a stingy one, made employment for him as a kind of messenger
or under clerk in his warehouse. The boy fell gratefully into the new
life, passing his days in and about the little counting-room that
looked out on Mr. Faringfield's wharf on the East River. He found it
dull work, the copying of invoices, the writing of letters to
merchants in other parts of the world, the counting of articles of
cargo, and often the bearing a hand in loading or unloading some
schooner or dray; but as beggars should not be choosers, so
beneficiaries should not be complainers, and Philip kept his feelings
to himself.

Mr. Faringfield was an exacting master, whose rule was that his men
should never be idle, even at times when there seemed nothing to do.
If no task was at hand, they should seek one; and if none could be
found, he was like to manufacture one. Thus was Phil denied the
pleasure of brightening or diversifying his day with reading, for
which he could have found time enough. He tried to be interested in
his work, and he in part succeeded, somewhat by good-fellowship with
the jesting, singing, swearing wharfmen and sailors, somewhat by
dwelling often on the thought that he was filling his small