Part 14 (1/2)

'Oh dear, no!' said she, and told hihtway

Charley, home for his winter holidays, blurted out at the squire's table: 'So, Harry Richmond, you're the cleverest fellow in the world, are you? There's Janet telling everybody your father's the cleverest next to you, and she's never seen hi out the squire

'Charley was speaking offor thunder

We all rose The squire looked as though an apoplectic seizure were coain,' he said, after a terrible struggle to be articulate

His hand was stretched atround to depart 'No, no, not you; that fellow,' he called, getting his arm level toward Charley

I tried to intercede--the last who should have done it

'You like to hear him, eh?' said the squire

I was ready to say that I did, but e was up when occasion su the decanter to the squire, and speaking to him in a low voice

'Biter's bit I've dished myself, that's clear,' said Charley; and he spoke the truth, and such was his frankness that I forgave hi at Riversley They left next , for the squire would not speak to him, nor I to Janet

'I 'll tell you what; there 's no doubt about one thing,' said Charley; 'Janet's right--soirls are tremendously deep: you're about the cleverest fellow I've everinto the squire in a sort of collateral oon Guards in a year or two I thought the squireyou;--perhaps a couple of hundred a year, just to reconcile me to a nose out of joint For, uponated--before you came back; and rather than be a curate like that Reverend Hart of yours, who hands raisins and ale-flower biscuits to your aunt the way of all the Reverends who drop down on Riversley--I 'd betray ularly ”hoist on my own petard,” as they say in the newspapers I'm a curate and noout: and I like neat boxing I bear no malice when I'm floored neatly'

Five minutes after he had spoken it would have been impossible for me to tell him that my simplicity and not my cleverness had caused his overthrow From this I learnt that simplicity is the keenest weapon and a beautiful refinement of cleverness; and I affected it extremely I pushed it so far that I could make the squire dance in his seat with suppressed fury and jealousy atof Venice, and other Continental cities, which he knew I ed at me and pshawed the Continent to the deuce, he was ready, out of sheer rivalry, to grant anything I pleased to covet At every stage of rowth one or another of etting a false self aboutliker to the creature people supposedthem for blockheads in enuousness denied to seasoned er for the address of little Gus Temple's father, to invite my schoolfellow to stay a month at Riversley

Teht was unbounded, and in spite of a feeling of superiority due to inated, that Te the plain well-bred schoolboy he was, I soon preferred his pattern to ed at first His father, it appeared, orking him as hard at Latin as Mr Hart worked me, and he sat down beside me under my tutor and stumbled at Tacitus after his fluent Cicero I offered excuses for hi he would soon prove himself the better scholar 'There'sme on the shoulder, and my nonsensical airs fell away fro old school-days over, visiting houses, hunting and dancing, declaring every day ould write for Heriot to join us, instead of which rote a valentine to Julia Rippenger, and despatched a companion one composed in a very different spirit to her father Lady Ilchester did us the favour to draw a sea- British hussar, for Julia's valentine It seemed to us so successful that we scattered half-a-dozen over the neighbourhood, and rode round it on theof St Valentine's Day to see the effect of theave me two forcounterstroke of an beating The standard of Great Britain was painted in colours at the top; down each side, encricled in laurels, were kings and queens of England with their sceptres, and in the middle I read the initials, A F-G R R, eet- out in the open air as I received it, I could fancy in my hot joy that it had dropped out of heaven

'He's alive; I shall have him with me; I shall have him with me soon!' I cried to Temple 'Oh! why can't I answer him? where is he? what address?

Let's ride to London Don't you understand, Temple? This letter's from my father He knows I'm here I'll find him, never mind what happens'

'Yes, but,' said Temple, 'if he knohere you are, and you don't knohere he is, there's no good in your going off adventuring If a felloants to be hit, the best thing he can do is to stop still'

Struck by the perspicacity of his views, I turned homeward Te ofstate of happiness, believing that my father would certainly appear as he had done at Dipwell farm, brilliant and cheerful, to bear me away to new scenes and his own dear society, that I tossed the valentine toher to guess the nae?' she said

A stranger was present The squire introduced us

'My grandson, Harry Richate Polypheustus Temple'

For the sake of conversation, Temple asked him if his shi+p was fully manned

'All but a mate,' said the captain