ncle, and gives me a look as much as to
say that I am not to be thanked for it. "I have often warned you, sir,"
he says to Mr. Carvel, "that we do not inherit from stocks and stones.
And so much has come of our charity."

I knew, lad that I was; that he spoke of my mother; and my blood boiled
within me.

"Have a care, sir, with your veiled insults," I cried, "or I will serve
you as I have served your son."

Grafton threw up his hands.

"What have we harboured, father?" says he. But Mr. Carvel seized him by
the shoulder. "Peace, Grafton, before the servants," he said, "and cease
thy crying, Caroline. The lad is not hurt." And being a tall man, six
feet in his stockings, and strong despite his age, he raised Philip from
the grass, and sternly bade him walk to the house, which he did, leaning
on his mother's arm. "As for you, Richard," my grandfather went on, "you
will go into my study."

Into his study I went, where presently he came also, and I told him
the affair in as few words as I might. And he, knowing my hatred of
falsehood, questioned me not at all, but paced to and fro, I following
him with my eyes, and truly sorry that I had given him pain. And finally
he dismissed me, bidding me make it up with my cousin, which I was
nothing loth to do. What he said to Philip and his father I know not.
That evening we shook hands, though Philip's face was much swollen, and
my uncle smiled, and was even pleasanter than before, saying that boys
would be boys. But I think my Aunt Caroline could never wholly hide the
malice she bore me for what I had done that day.

When at last the visitors were gone, every face on the plantation wore a
brighter look. Harvey said: "God bless their backs, which is the only
part I ever care to see of their honours." And Willis gave us a supper
fit for a king. Mr. Lloyd and his lady were with us, and Mr. Carvel told
his old stories of the time of the First George, many of which I can even
now repeat: how he and two other collegians fought half a dozen Mohocks
in Norfolk Street, and fairly beat them; and how he discovered by chance
a Jacobite refugee in Greenwich, and what came of it; nor did he forget
that oft-told episode with Dean Swift. And these he rehearsed in such
merry spirit and new guise that we scarce recognized them, and Colonel
Lloyd so choked with laughter that more than once he had to be hit
between the shoulders.

CHAPTER V

"IF LADIES BE BUT YOUNG AND FAIR"

No boyho