The awe exhibited by the little boy perhaps pleased the lady to whom this artless flattery was bestowed:  for having gone down on his knee (as Father Holt had directed him, and the mode then was) and performed his obeisance, she said, “Page Esmond, my groom of the chamber will inform you what your duties are, when you wait upon my lord and me; and good Father Holt will instruct you as becomes a gentleman of our name.  You will pay him obedience in everything, and I pray you may grow to be as learned and as good as your tutor.”

The lady seemed to have the greatest reverence for Mr. Holt, and to be more afraid of him than of anything else in the world.  If she was ever so angry, a word or look from Father Holt made her calm:  indeed he had a vast power of subjecting those who came near him; and, among the rest, his new pupil gave himself up with an entire confidence and attachment to the good Father, and became his willing slave almost from the first moment he saw him.

He put his small hand into the Father’s as he walked away from his first presentation to his mistress, and asked many questions in his artless childish way.  “Who is that other woman?” he asked.  “She is fat and round; she is more pretty than my Lady Castlewood.”

“She is Madame Tusher, the parson’s wife of Castlewood.  She has a son of your age, but bigger than you.”

“Why does she like so to kiss my lady’s hand.  It is not good to kiss.”

“Tastes are different, little man.  Madame Tusher is attached to my lady, having been her waiting-woman before she was married, in the old lord’s time.  She married Doctor Tusher the chaplain.  The English household divines often marry the waiting-women.”

“You will not marry the French woman, will you?  I saw her laughing with Blaise in the buttery.”

“I belong to a church that is older and better than the English church,” Mr. Holt said (making a sign whereof Esmond did not then understand the meaning, across his breast and forehead); “in our church the clergy do not marry.  You will understand these things better soon.”

“Was not Saint Peter the head of your church?—­Dr. Rabbits of Ealing told us so.”

The Father said, “Yes, he was.”

“But Saint Peter was married, for we heard only last Sunday that his wife’s mother lay sick of a fever.”  On which the Father again laughed, and said he would understand this too better soon, and talked of other things, and took away Harry Esmond, and showed him the great old house which he had come to inhabit.

It stood on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in which were rooks’ nests, where the birds at morning and returning home at evening made a great cawing.  At the foot of the hill was a river, with a steep ancient bridge crossing it; and beyond that a large pleasant green flat, where the village of Castlewood stood, and stands, with the church in the midst, the parsonage hard by it, the inn with the blacksmith’s