row to be as learned and as
good as your tutor."

The lady seemed to have the greatest reverence for Mr. Holt, and to be
more afraid of him than of anything else in the world. If she was ever so
angry, a word or look from Father Holt made her calm: indeed he had a vast
power of subjecting those who came near him; and, among the rest, his new
pupil gave himself up with an entire confidence and attachment to the good
father, and became his willing slave almost from the first moment he saw
him.

He put his small hand into the father's as he walked away from his first
presentation to his mistress, and asked many questions in his artless
childish way. "Who is that other woman?" he asked. "She is fat and round;
she is more pretty than my Lady Castlewood."

"She is Madam Tusher, the parson's wife of Castlewood. She has a son of
your age, but bigger than you."

"Why does she like so to kiss my lady's hand? It is not good to kiss."

"Tastes are different, little man. Madam Tusher is attached to my lady,
having been her waiting-woman, before she was married, in the old lord's
time. She married Doctor Tusher the chaplain. The English household
divines often marry the waiting-women."

"You will not marry the French woman, will you? I saw her laughing with
Blaise in the buttery."

"I belong to a church that is older and better than the English Church,"
Mr. Holt said (making a sign whereof Esmond did not then understand the
meaning, across his breast and forehead); "in our Church the clergy do not
marry. You will understand these things better soon."

"Was not St. Peter the head of your Church?--Dr. Rabbits of Ealing told us
so."

The father said, "Yes, he was."

"But St. Peter was married, for we heard only last Sunday that his wife's
mother lay sick of a fever." On which the father again laughed, and said
he would understand this too better soon, and talked of other things, and
took away Harry Esmond, and showed him the great old house which he had
come to inhabit.

It stood on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in which were
rooks' nests, where the birds at morning and returning home at evening
made a great cawing. At the foot of the hill was a river with a steep
ancient bridge crossing it; and beyond that a large pleasant green flat,
where the village of Castlewood stood and stands, with the church in the
midst, the parsonage hard by it, the inn with the blacksmith's forge
beside it, and the sign of the "Thr