, my kinsman," he continued, giving
Harry Esmond a hearty slap on the shoulder. "I won't balk your luck. Go
to Cambridge, boy, and when Tusher dies you shall have the living
here, if you are not better provided by that time. We'll furnish the
dining-room and buy the horses another year. I'll give thee a nag out
of the stable: take any one except my hack and the bay gelding and the
coach-horses; and God speed thee, my boy!"

"Have the sorrel, Harry; 'tis a good one. Father says 'tis the best
in the stable," says little Frank, clapping his hands, and jumping up.
"Let's come and see him in the stable." And the other, in his delight
and eagerness, was for leaving the room that instant to arrange about
his journey.

The Lady Castlewood looked after him with sad penetrating glances. "He
wishes to be gone already, my lord," said she to her husband.

The young man hung back abashed. "Indeed, I would stay for ever, if your
ladyship bade me," he said.

"And thou wouldst be a fool for thy pains, kinsman," said my lord. "Tut,
tut, man. Go and see the world. Sow thy wild oats; and take the best
luck that Fate sends thee. I wish I were a boy again, that I might go to
college, and taste the Trumpington ale."

"Ours, indeed, is but a dull home," cries my lady, with a little of
sadness and, maybe, of satire, in her voice: "an old glum house, half
ruined, and the rest only half furnished; a woman and two children are
but poor company for men that are accustomed to better. We are only fit
to be your worship's handmaids, and your pleasures must of necessity lie
elsewhere than at home."

"Curse me, Rachel, if I know now whether thou art in earnest or not,"
said my lord.

"In earnest, my lord!" says she, still clinging by one of her children.
"Is there much subject here for joke?" And she made him a grand curtsy,
and, giving a stately look to Harry Esmond, which seemed to say,
"Remember; you understand me, though he does not," she left the room
with her children.

"Since she found out that confounded Hexton business," my lord
said--"and be hanged to them that told her!--she has not been the same
woman. She, who used to be as humble as a milkmaid, is as proud as a
princess," says my lord. "Take my counsel, Harry Esmond, and keep clear
of women. Since I have had anything to do with the jades, they have
given me nothing but disgust. I had a wife at Tangier, with whom, as she
couldn't speak a word of my language, you'd have thought I m