o small anxiety the fate, whatever it was,
which was over him.

CHAPTER VII.

I AM LEFT AT CASTLEWOOD AN ORPHAN, AND FIND MOST KIND PROTECTORS THERE.

During the stay of the soldiers in Castlewood, honest Dick the Scholar
was the constant companion of the lonely little orphan lad Harry Esmond:
and they read together, and they played bowls together, and when the
other troopers or their officers, who were free-spoken over their cups,
(as was the way of that day, when neither men nor women were over-nice,)
talked unbecomingly of their amours and gallantries before the child,
Dick, who very likely was setting the whole company laughing, would stop
their jokes with a maxima debetur pueris reverentia, and once offered
to lug out against another trooper called Hulking Tom, who wanted to ask
Harry Esmond a ribald question.

Also, Dick seeing that the child had, as he said, a sensibility above
his years, and a great and praiseworthy discretion, confided to Harry
his love for a vintner's daughter, near to the Tollyard, Westminster,
whom Dick addressed as Saccharissa in many verses of his composition,
and without whom he said it would be impossible that he could continue
to live. He vowed this a thousand times in a day, though Harry smiled to
see the love-lorn swain had his health and appetite as well as the most
heart-whole trooper in the regiment: and he swore Harry to secrecy too,
which vow the lad religiously kept, until he found that officers and
privates were all taken into Dick's confidence, and had the benefit of
his verses. And it must be owned likewise that, while Dick was sighing
after Saccharissa in London, he had consolations in the country; for
there came a wench out of Castlewood village who had washed his linen,
and who cried sadly when she heard he was gone: and without paying her
bill too, which Harry Esmond took upon himself to discharge by giving
the girl a silver pocket-piece, which Scholar Dick had presented to him,
when, with many embraces and prayers for his prosperity, Dick parted
from him, the garrison of Castlewood being ordered away. Dick the
Scholar said he would never forget his young friend, nor indeed did he:
and Harry was sorry when the kind soldiers vacated Castlewood, looking
forward with no small anxiety (for care and solitude had made him
thoughtful beyond his years) to his fate when the new lord and lady of
the house came to live there. He had lived to be past twelve years old
now;