Blessed be the king who introduced cards, and the kind inventors of piquet and cribbage, for they employed six hours at least of her ladyship’s day, during which her family was pretty easy.  Without this occupation my lady frequently declared she should die.  Her dependants one after another relieved guard—­’twas rather a dangerous post to play with her ladyship—­and took the cards turn about.  Mr. Holt would sit with her at piquet during hours together, at which time she behaved herself properly; and as for Dr. Tusher, I believe he would have left a parishioner’s dying bed, if summoned to play a rubber with his patroness at Castlewood.  Sometimes, when they were pretty comfortable together, my lord took a hand.  Besides these my lady had her faithful poor Tusher, and one, two, three gentlewomen whom Harry Esmond could recollect in his time.  They could not bear that genteel service very long; one after another tried and failed at it.  These and the housekeeper, and little Harry Esmond, had a table of their own.  Poor ladies their life was far harder than the page’s.  He was sound asleep, tucked up in his little bed, whilst they were sitting by her ladyship reading her to sleep, with the “News Letter” or the “Grand Cyrus.”  My lady used to have boxes of new plays from London, and Harry was forbidden, under the pain of a whipping, to look into them.  I am afraid he deserved the penalty pretty often, and got it sometimes.  Father Holt applied it twice or thrice, when he caught the young scapegrace with a delightful wicked comedy of Mr. Shadwell’s or Mr. Wycherley’s under his pillow.

These, when he took any, were my lord’s favorite reading.  But he was averse to much study, and, as his little page fancied, to much occupation of any sort.

It always seemed to young Harry Esmond that my lord treated him with more kindness when his lady was not present, and Lord Castlewood would take the lad sometimes on his little journeys a-hunting or a-birding; he loved to play at cards and tric-trac with him, which games the boy learned to pleasure his lord:  and was growing to like him better daily, showing a special pleasure if Father Holt gave a good report of him, patting him on the head, and promising that he would provide for the boy.  However, in my lady’s presence, my lord showed no such marks of kindness, and affected to treat the lad roughly, and rebuked him sharply for little faults, for which he in a manner asked pardon of young Esmond when they were private, saying if he did not speak roughly, she would, and his tongue was not such a bad one as his lady’s—­a point whereof the boy, young as he was, was very well assured.