I am a little reluctant to admit at this time that my earliest impression of the subject of these memoirs was disappointing.  Perhaps the dead man’s encomiums had raised my hopes.  Perhaps the barriers which hedged in this most exclusive of youngsters had increased his importance in my thoughts.  What I saw was a boy of ten, well grown for his years, who ambled forward rather sheepishly and gave me a moist and rather flabby hand to shake.

He was painfully embarrassed.  If I had been an ogre and Jerry the youth allotted for his repast, he could not have shown more distress.  He was distinctly nursery-bred and, of course, unused to visitors, but he managed a smile, and I saw that he was making the best of a bad job.  After the preliminaries of introduction, amid which Mr. Radford, the steward of the estate, appeared, I managed to get the boy aside.

“I feel a good deal like the Minotaur, Jerry.  Did you ever hear of the Minotaur?”

He hadn’t, and so I told him the story.  “But I’m not going to eat you,” I laughed.

I had broken the ice, for a smile, a genuine joyous smile, broke slowly and then flowed in generous ripples across his face.

“You’re different, aren’t you?” he said presently, his brown eyes now gravely appraising me.

“How different, Jerry?” I asked.

He hesitated a moment and then: 

“I—­I thought you’d come all in black with a lot of grammar books under your arms.”

“I don’t use ’em,” I said.  “I’m a boy, just like you, only I’ve got long trousers on.  We’re not going to bother about books for awhile.”

He still inspected me as though he wasn’t quite sure it wasn’t all a mistake.  And then again: 

“Can you talk Latin?”

“Bless you, I’m afraid not.”

“Oh!” he sighed, though whether in relief or disappointment I couldn’t say.

“But you can do sums in your head and spell hippopotamus?”

“I might,” I laughed.  “But I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to.”

“But I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“Oh, some day.”

“I’m afraid I never can,” he sighed again.

I began to understand now.  His mind was feminine and at least three years backward.  There wasn’t a mark of the boy of ten about him.  But I liked his eyes.  They were wide and inquiring.  It wouldn’t be difficult to gain his confidence.

“Are you sorry Miss Redwood is going?” I asked him.

“Yes.  She plays games.”

“I know some games, too—­good ones.”

He brightened, but said nothing for a moment, though I saw him stealing a glance at me.  Whatever the object of his inspection, I seemed to have passed it creditably, for he said rather timidly: 

“Would you like to see my bull pup?”

It was the first remark that sounded as though it came from the heart of a real boy.  I had won the first line of entrenchments around Jerry’s reserve.  When a boy asks you to see his bull pup he confers upon you at once the highest mark of his approval.