He boasted ardently of his fighting father, and,
chancing to be near the Hall as he was talking to Vernon and Laetitia
of his father, he propounded a question close to his heart, and he put
it in these words, following: "My father's the one to lead an army!"
when he paused. "I say, Mr. Whitford, Sir Willoughby's kind to me, and
gives me crown-pieces, why wouldn't he see my father, and my father
came here ten miles in the rain to see him, and had to walk ten miles
back, and sleep at an inn?"

The only answer to be given was, that Sir Willoughby could not have
been at home. "Oh! my father saw him, and Sir Willoughby said he was
not at home," the boy replied, producing an odd ring in the ear by his
repetition of "not at home" in the same voice as the apology, plainly
innocent of malice. Vernon told Laetitia, however, that the boy never
asked an explanation of Sir Willoughby.

Unlike the horse of the adage, it was easier to compel young Crossjay
to drink of the waters of instruction than to get him to the brink. His
heart was not so antagonistic as his nature, and by degrees, owing to a
proper mixture of discipline and cajolery, he imbibed. He was whistling
at the cook's windows after a day of wicked truancy, on an April night,
and reported adventures over the supper supplied to him. Laetitia
entered the kitchen with a reproving forefinger. He jumped to kiss her,
and went on chattering of a place fifteen miles distant, where he had
seen Sir Willoughby riding with a young lady. The impossibility that
the boy should have got so far on foot made Laetitia doubtful of his
veracity, until she heard that a gentleman had taken him up on the road
in a gig, and had driven him to a farm to show him strings of birds'
eggs and stuffed birds of every English kind, kingfishers, yaffles,
black woodpeckers, goat-sucker owls, more mouth than head, with dusty,
dark-spotted wings, like moths; all very circumstantial. Still, in
spite of his tea at the farm, and ride back by rail at the gentleman's
expense, the tale seemed fictitious to Laetitia until Crossjay related
how that he had stood to salute on the road to the railway, and taken
off his cap to Sir Willoughby, and Sir Willoughby had passed him, not
noticing him, though the young lady did, and looked back and nodded.
The hue of truth was in that picture.

Strange eclipse, when the hue of truth comes shadowing over our bright
ideal planet. It will not seem the planet's fault, but truth's