misdoing, though obliged to emphasize the former. The doctor would never
raise his hand against me. His study, where I recited my daily tasks,
was that small sunny room on the water side of the east wing; and I well
recall him as he sat behind his desk of a morning after prayers, his
horn spectacles perched on his high nose and his quill over his ear,
and his ink-powder and pewter stand beside him. His face would grow more
serious as I scanned my Virgil in a faltering voice, and as he descanted
on a passage my eye would wander out over the green trees and fields to
the glistening water. What cared I for "Arma virumque" at such a time? I
was watching Nebo a-fishing beyond the point, and as he waded ashore
the burden on his shoulders had a much keener interest for me than that
AEneas carried out of Troy.
My Uncle Grafton came to Dr. Hilliard's funeral, choosing this
opportunity to become reconciled to my grandfather, who he feared had
not much longer to live. Albeit Mr. Carvel was as stout and hale as
ever. None of the mourners at the doctor's grave showed more sorrow than
did Grafton. A thousand remembrances of the good old man returned to
him, and I heard him telling Mr. Carroll and some other gentlemen, with
much emotion, how he had loved his reverend preceptor, from whom he had
learned nothing but what was good. "How fortunate are you, Richard,"
he once said, "to have had such a spiritual and intellectual teacher in
your youth. Would that Philip might have learned from such a one. And
I trust you can say, my lad, that you have made the best of your
advantages, though I fear you are of a wild nature, as your father was
before you." And my uncle sighed and crossed his hands behind his back.
"'Tis perhaps better that poor John is in his grave," he said. Grafton
had a word and a smile for every one about the old place, but little
else, being, as he said, but a younger son and a poor man. I was near
to forgetting the shilling he gave Scipio. 'Twas not so unostentatiously
done but that Mr. Carvel and I marked it. And afterwards I made Scipio
give me the coin, replacing it with another, and flung it as far into
the river as ever I could throw.
As was but proper to show his sorrow at the death of the old chaplain he
had loved so much, Grafton came to the Hall drest entirely in black. He
would have had his lady and Philip, a lad near my own age, clad likewise
in sombre colours. But my Aunt Caroline would none of them, holdi
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