thrashed by Mr. Carvel, who thought the more of the latter misdoing, though obliged to emphasize the former.  The doctor would never raise his hand against me.  His study, where I recited my daily tasks, was that small sunny room on the water side of the east wing; and I well recall him as he sat behind his desk of a morning after prayers, his horn spectacles perched on his high nose and his quill over his ear, and his ink-powder and pewter stand beside him.  His face would grow more serious as I scanned my Virgil in a faltering voice, and as he descanted on a passage my eye would wander out over the green trees and fields to the glistening water.  What cared I for “Arma virumque” at such a time?  I was watching Nebo a-fishing beyond the point, and as he waded ashore the burden on his shoulders had a much keener interest for me than that AEneas carried out of Troy.

My Uncle Grafton came to Dr. Hilliard’s funeral, choosing this opportunity to become reconciled to my grandfather, who he feared had not much longer to live.  Albeit Mr. Carvel was as stout and hale as ever.  None of the mourners at the doctor’s grave showed more sorrow than did Grafton.  A thousand remembrances of the good old man returned to him, and I heard him telling Mr. Carroll and some other gentlemen, with much emotion, how he had loved his reverend preceptor, from whom he had learned nothing but what was good.  “How fortunate are you, Richard,” he once said, “to have had such a spiritual and intellectual teacher in your youth.  Would that Philip might have learned from such a one.  And I trust you can say, my lad, that you have made the best of your advantages, though I fear you are of a wild nature, as your father was before you.”  And my uncle sighed and crossed his hands behind his back.  “’Tis perhaps better that poor John is in his grave,” he said.  Grafton had a word and a smile for every one about the old place, but little else, being, as he said, but a younger son and a poor man.  I was near to forgetting the shilling he gave Scipio.  ’Twas not so unostentatiously done but that Mr. Carvel and I marked it.  And afterwards I made Scipio give me the coin, replacing it with another, and flung it as far into the river as ever I could throw.

As was but proper to show his sorrow at the death of the old chaplain he had loved so much, Grafton came to the Hall drest entirely in black.  He would have had his lady and Philip, a lad near my own age, clad likewise in sombre colours.  But my Aunt Caroline would none of them, holding it to be the right of her sex to dress as became its charms.  Her silks and laces went but ill with the low estate my uncle claimed for his purse, and Master Philip’s wardrobe was twice the size of mine.  And the family travelled in a coach as grand as Mr. Carvel’s own, with panels wreathed in flowers and a footman and outrider in livery, from which my aunt descended like a duchess.  She embraced my grandfather with much warmth, and kissed me effusively on both cheeks.