“I well know thy temper, Richard,” said he, “and I fear ’twill bring thee trouble enough in life.  Try to control it, my lad; take an old man’s advice and try to control it.”  He was in one of his gentler moods, and passed his arm about me, and together we stood looking silently through the square panes out into the rain, at the ducks paddling in the puddles until the darkness hid them.

And God knows, lad that I was, I tried to be civil to them.  But my tongue rebelled at the very sight of my uncle (’twas bred into me, I suppose), and his fairest words seemed to me to contain a hidden sting.  Once, when he spoke in his innuendo of my father, I ran from the room to restrain some act of violence; I know not what I should have done.  And Willis found me in the deserted, study of the doctor, where my hot tears had stained the flowered paper on the wall.  She did her best to calm me, good soul, though she had her own troubles with my Lady Caroline to think about at the time.

I had one experience with Master Philip before our visitors betook themselves back to Kent, which, unfortunate as it was, I cannot but relate here.  My cousin would enter into none of those rough amusements in which I passed my time, for fear, I took it, of spoiling his fine broadcloths or of losing a gold buckle.  He never could be got to wrestle, though I challenged him more than once.  And he was a well-built lad, and might, with a little practice, have become skilled in that sport.  He laughed at the homespun I wore about the farm, saying it was no costume for a gentleman’s son, and begged me sneeringly to don leather breeches.  He would have none of the company of those lads with whom I found pleasure, young Harvey, and Willis’s son, who was being trained as Mr. Starkie’s assistant.  Nor indeed did I disdain to join in a game with Hugo, who had been given to me, and other negro lads.  Philip saw no sport in a wrestle or a fight between two of the boys from the quarters, and marvelled that I could lower myself to bet with Harvey the younger.  He took not a spark of interest in the gaming cocks we raised together to compete at the local contests and at the fair, and knew not a gaff from a cockspur.  Being one day at my wits’ end to amuse my cousin, I proposed to him a game of quoits on the green beside the spring-house, and thither we repaired, followed by Hugo, and young Harvey come to look on.  Master Philip, not casting as well as he might, cries out suddenly to Hugo:  “Begone, you black dog!  What business have you here watching a game between gentlemen?”

“He is my servant, cousin,” I said quietly, “and no dog, if you please.  And he is under my orders, not yours.”

But Philip, having scarcely scored a point, was in a rage.  “And I’ll not have him here,” he shouted, giving poor Hugo a cuff which sent him stumbling over the stake.  And turning to me; continued insolently:  “Ever since we came here I have marked your manner toward us, as though my father had no right in my grandfather’s house.”