Such was Adrian Harley, another of Sir Austin’s intellectual favourites, chosen from mankind to superintend the education of his son at Raynham.  Adrian had been destined for the Church.  He did not enter into Orders.  He and the baronet had a conference together one day, and from that time Adrian became a fixture in the Abbey.  His father died in his promising son’s college term, bequeathing him nothing but his legal complexion, and Adrian became stipendiary officer in his uncle’s household.

A playfellow of Richard’s occasionally, and the only comrade of his age that he ever saw, was Master Ripton Thompson, the son of Sir Austin’s solicitor, a boy without a character.

A comrade of some description was necessary, for Richard was neither to go to school nor to college.  Sir Austin considered that the schools were corrupt, and maintained that young lads might by parental vigilance be kept pretty secure from the Serpent until Eve sided with him:  a period that might be deferred, he said.  He had a system of education for his son.  How it worked we shall see.

CHAPTER II

October, shone royally on Richard’s fourteenth birthday.  The brown beechwoods and golden birches glowed to a brilliant sun.  Banks of moveless cloud hung about the horizon, mounded to the west, where slept the wind.  Promise of a great day for Raynham, as it proved to be, though not in the manner marked out.

Already archery-booths and cricketing-tents were rising on the lower grounds towards the river, whither the lads of Bursley and Lobourne, in boats and in carts, shouting for a day of ale and honour, jogged merrily to match themselves anew, and pluck at the lining laurel from each other’s brows, line manly Britons.  The whole park was beginning to be astir and resound with holiday cries.  Sir Austin Feverel, a thorough good Tory, was no game-preserver, and could be popular whenever he chose, which Sir Males Papworth, on the other side of the river, a fast-handed Whig and terror to poachers, never could be.  Half the village of Lobourne was seen trooping through the avenues of the park.  Fiddlers and gipsies clamoured at the gates for admission:  white smocks, and slate, surmounted by hats of serious brim, and now and then a scarlet cloak, smacking of the old country, dotted the grassy sweeps to the levels.

And all the time the star of these festivities was receding further and further, and eclipsing himself with his reluctant serf Ripton, who kept asking what they were to do and where they were going, and how late it was in the day, and suggesting that the lads of Lobourne would be calling out for them, and Sir Austin requiring their presence, without getting any attention paid to his misery or remonstrances.  For Richard had been requested by his father to submit to medical examination like a boor enlisting for a soldier, and he was in great wrath.

He was flying as though he would have flown from the shameful thought of what had been asked of him.  By-and-by he communicated his sentiments to Ripton, who said they were those of a girl:  an offensive remark, remembering which, Richard, after they had borrowed a couple of guns at the bailiff’s farm, and Ripton had fired badly, called his friend a fool.