to the drawing-room. Angelica darted
after him and dragged him forward into the light. He was small for his
age, but his features had the bold curious outline of his father's. He
carried himself with dignity, but it was plain that he was terrified and
unhappy. Hamilton gave him a warm embrace, and asked him several
questions in French. The boy brightened at once, answered rapidly and
intelligently, and took firm possession of his new friend's hand.

"I am more happy now," he announced. "I don't like the other people
here, except this little girl, because they do not speak French, but you
are a Frenchman, and I shall love you, as my father said I should--long
ago! I will stay with you day and night."

"Oh, you will?" exclaimed Hamilton. "I am going to send you to school
with my boys."

"Oh, not yet, sir! not yet!" cried the boy, shrilly. "I have seen so
many strangers on that dreadful ship, and in France--we hid here,
there--moving all the time. I wish to live with you and be your little
boy."

"And so you shall, but I am uncommonly busy."

"He is a very quiet little boy," interposed Angelica, who was three
years his junior. "He would not move if he sat in your room, and I will
take him for a walk every day. He will die if he has to sit in a room by
himself all day."

"I shall sleep with you, sir, I hope?" asked young Lafayette, eagerly.
"I have thought all day of the dark of to-night. I have seen such
terrible things, sir!"

"Good Heaven!" thought Hamilton, "is it not enough to be dry nurse to a
nation?" But he could not refuse, and during the few hours he snatched
for sleep he was half strangled. By day the boy sat quietly in a corner
of the library, and studied the text-books his guardian bought him.
Betsey did all she could to win him, but he had no faith in people who
could not speak his language. Angelica, like all of Hamilton's children,
knew something of French, and he liked her and accepted her motherly
attentions; but Hamilton he adored. The moment his absorbed friend made
for the front door he was after him, and Hamilton let him run at his
heels, lest he get neither air nor exercise. He had no time at present
to take him to call on his august godfather, and, in truth, he dreaded
the prospect. Washington knew nothing of children, and his diminutive
namesake would probably be terrified into spasms.

XXXIII

The three long and exhaustive reports, accounting honourably for every
penny entrusted to th