Mr. Thompson received his client with the dignity and emotion due to such a rent-roll and the unexpectedness of the honour.  He was a thin stately man of law, garbed as one who gave audience to acred bishops, and carrying on his countenance the stamp of paternity to the parchment skins, and of a virtuous attachment to Port wine sufficient to increase his respectability in the eyes of moral Britain.  After congratulating Sir Austin on the fortunate issue of two or three suits, and being assured that the baronet’s business in town had no concern therewith, Mr. Thompson ventured to hope that the young heir was all his father could desire him to be, and heard with satisfaction that he was a pattern to the youth of the Age.

“A difficult time of life, Sir Austin!” said the old lawyer, shaking his head.  “We must keep our eyes on them—­keep awake!  The mischief is done in a minute.”

“We must take care to have seen where we planted, and that the root was sound, or the mischief will do itself in site of, or under the very spectacles of, supervision,” said the baronet.

His legal adviser murmured “Exactly,” as if that were his own idea, adding, “It is my plan with Ripton, who has had the honour of an introduction to you, and a very pleasant time he spent with my young friend, whom he does not forget.  Ripton follows the Law.  He is articled to me, and will, I trust, succeed me worthily in your confidence.  I bring him into town in the morning; I take him back at night.  I think I may say that I am quite content with him.”

“Do you think,” said Sir Austin, fixing his brows, “that you can trace every act of his to its motive?”

The old lawyer bent forward and humbly requested that this might be repeated.

“Do you”—­Sir Austin held the same searching expression—­“do you establish yourself in a radiating centre of intuition:  do you base your watchfulness on so thorough an acquaintance with his character, so perfect a knowledge of the instrument, that all its movements—­even the eccentric ones—­are anticipated by you, and provided for?”

The explanation was a little too long for the old lawyer to entreat another repetition.  Winking with the painful deprecation of a deaf man, Mr. Thompson smiled urbanely, coughed conciliatingly, and said he was afraid he could not affirm that much, though he was happily enabled to say that Ripton had borne an extremely good character at school.

“I find,” Sir Austin remarked, as sardonically he relaxed his inspecting pose and mien, “there are fathers who are content to be simply obeyed.  Now I require not only that my son should obey; I would have him guiltless of the impulse to gainsay my wishes—­feeling me in him stronger than his undeveloped nature, up to a certain period, where my responsibility ends and his commences.  Man is a self-acting machine.  He cannot cease to be a machine; but, though self-acting, he may lose the powers of self-guidance, and in a wrong course his very vitalities hurry him to perdition.  Young, he is an organism ripening to the set mechanic diurnal round, and while so he needs all the angels to hold watch over him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit for what machinal duties he may have to perform"...