two clowns break their heads at a
cudgelling match; and he liked better to sit in his parlour drinking ale
and punch with Jack and Tom, than in his wife's drawing-room: whither, if
he came, he brought only too often bloodshot eyes, a hiccuping voice, and
a reeling gait. The management of the house and the property, the care of
the few tenants and the village poor, and the accounts of the estate, were
in the hands of his lady and her young secretary, Harry Esmond. My lord
took charge of the stables, the kennel, and the cellar--and he filled this
and emptied it too.

So it chanced that upon this very day, when poor Harry Esmond had had the
blacksmith's son, and the peer's son, alike upon his knee, little Beatrix,
who would come to her tutor willingly enough with her book and her
writing, had refused him, seeing the place occupied by her brother, and,
luckily for her, had sat at the further end of the room, away from him,
playing with a spaniel dog which she had (and for which, by fits and
starts, she would take a great affection), and talking at Harry Esmond
over her shoulder, as she pretended to caress the dog, saying, that Fido
would love her, and she would love Fido, and nothing but Fido, all her
life.

When, then, the news was brought that the little boy at the "Three
Castles" was ill with the small-pox, poor Harry Esmond felt a shock of
alarm, not so much for himself as for his mistress's son, whom he might
have brought into peril. Beatrix, who had pouted sufficiently (and who
whenever a stranger appeared began, from infancy almost, to play off
little graces to catch his attention), her brother being now gone to bed,
was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee: for, though the doctor was
very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots
and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because she hated learning
the catechism.

But as she advanced towards Esmond from the corner where she had been
sulking, he started back and placed the great chair on which he was
sitting between him and her--saying in the French language to Lady
Castlewood, with whom the young lad had read much, and whom he had
perfected in this tongue--"Madam, the child must not approach me; I must
tell you that I was at the blacksmith's to-day, and had his little boy
upon my lap."

"Where you took my son afterwards," Lady Castlewood said, very angry, and
turning red. "I thank you, sir, for giving him such company. Beatrix,