Frewen had
to come up and sit in my room for company last night, and I actually
kissed him, a thing that has not occurred for years. Jack, poor
fellow, bears it as well as he can, and has taken the opportunity of
having a fester on his foot, so he is lame, and has it bathed, and
this occupies his thoughts a good deal."

"_Feb. 19th._--As to Mill, Austin has not got the list yet. I think it
will prejudice him very much against Mill--but that is not my affair.
Education of that kind!... I would as soon cram my boys with food, and
boast of the pounds they had eaten, as cram them with literature."

But if Fleeming was an anxious father, he did not suffer his anxiety to
prevent the boys from any manly or even dangerous pursuit. Whatever it
might occur to them to try, he would carefully show them how to do it,
explain the risks, and then either share the danger himself or, if that
were not possible, stand aside and wait the event with that unhappy
courage of the looker-on. He was a good swimmer, and taught them to
swim. He thoroughly loved all manly exercises; and during their
holidays, and principally in the Highlands, helped and encouraged them
to excel in as many as possible: to shoot, to fish, to walk, to pull an
oar, to hand, reef and steer, and to run a steam-launch. In all of
these, and in all parts of Highland life, he shared delightedly. He was
well on to forty when he took once more to shooting, he was forty-three
when he killed his first salmon, but no boy could have more
single-mindedly rejoiced in these pursuits. His growing love for the
Highland character, perhaps also a sense of the difficulty of the task,
led him to take up at forty-one the study of Gaelic; in which he made
some shadow of progress, but not much: the fastnesses of that elusive
speech retaining to the last their independence. At the house of his
friend Mrs. Blackburn, who plays the part of a Highland lady as to the
manner born, he learned the delightful custom of kitchen dances, which
became the rule at his own house, and brought him into yet nearer
contact with his neighbours. And thus, at forty-two, he began to learn
the reel; a study to which he brought his usual smiling earnestness; and
the steps, diagrammatically represented by his own hand, are before me
as I write.

It was in 1879 that a new feature was added to the Highland life: a
steam-launch, called the _Purgle_, the Styrian corruption of Walpurga,
after a friend