The village people began to be reconciled presently to their lady, who was generous and kind, though fantastic and haughty, in her ways; and whose praises Dr. Tusher, the Vicar, sounded loudly amongst his flock.  As for my lord, he gave no great trouble, being considered scarce more than an appendage to my lady, who, as daughter of the old lords of Castlewood, and possessor of vast wealth, as the country folks said (though indeed nine-tenths of it existed but in rumor), was looked upon as the real queen of the Castle, and mistress of all it contained.

CHAPTER III.

Whither in the time of Thomas, third viscount, I had preceded him as page to Isabella.

Coming up to London again some short time after this retreat, the Lord Castlewood despatched a retainer of his to a little Cottage in the village of Ealing, near to London, where for some time had dwelt an old French refugee, by name Mr. Pastoureau, one of those whom the persecution of the Huguenots by the French king had brought over to this country.  With this old man lived a little lad, who went by the name of Henry Thomas.  He remembered to have lived in another place a short time before, near to London too, amongst looms and spinning-wheels, and a great deal of psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of Frenchmen.

There he had a dear, dear friend, who died, and whom he called Aunt.  She used to visit him in his dreams sometimes; and her face, though it was homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs. Pastoureau, Bon Papa Pastoureau’s new wife, who came to live with him after aunt went away.  And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived Uncle George, who was a weaver too, but used to tell Harry that he was a little gentleman, and that his father was a captain, and his mother an angel.

When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and say, “Angel! she belongs to the Babylonish scarlet woman.”  Bon Papa was always talking of the scarlet woman.  He had a little room where he always used to preach and sing hymns out of his great old nose.  Little Harry did not like the preaching; he liked better the fine stories which aunt used to tell him.  Bon Papa’s wife never told him pretty stories; she quarrelled with Uncle George, and he went away.

After this, Harry’s Bon Papa and his wife and two children of her own that she brought with her, came to live at Ealing.  The new wife gave her children the best of everything, and Harry many a whipping, he knew not why.  Besides blows, he got ill names from her, which need not be set down here, for the sake of old Mr. Pastoureau, who was still kind sometimes.  The unhappiness of those days is long forgiven, though they cast a shade of melancholy over the child’s youth, which will accompany him, no doubt, to the end of his days:  as those tender twigs are bent the trees grow afterward; and he, at least, who has suffered as a child, and is not quite perverted in that early school of unhappiness, learns to be gentle and long-suffering with little children.