een spread in their honor, and hissed in a savage whisper--

"Recite your song of welcome."

"'Happy the man,'" began Dickie, in tones of gloom, and tremblingly
pronounced the first lines of that unpleasing poem.

But he had not got to "strive with pride" before the dear lady caught
him in her arms, exclaiming, "Bless my dear son! how he has grown!" and
the fine gentleman thumped him on the back, and bade him "bear himself
like a gentleman's son, and not like a queasy square-toes." And they
both laughed, and he cried a little, and the tutor seemed to be blotted
out, and there they were, all three as jolly as if they had known each
other all their lives. And a stout young nurse brought the baby, and
Dickie loved it and felt certain it loved him, though it only said, "Goo
ga goo," exactly as your baby-brother does now, and got hold of Dickie's
hair and pulled it and would not let go.

There was a glorious dinner, and Dickie waited on this new father of
his, changed his plate, and poured wine out of a silver jug into the
silver cup that my lord drank from. And after dinner the dear
lady-mother must go all over the house to see everything, because she
had been so long away, and Dickie walked in the garden among the ripe
apples and grapes with his father's hand on his shoulder, the happiest,
proudest boy in all Deptford--or in all Kent either.

His father asked what he had learned, and Dickie told, dwelling,
perhaps, more on the riding, and the fencing, and the bowls, and the
music than on the sour-faced tutor's side of the business.

"But I've learned a lot of Greek and Latin, too," he added in a hurry,
"and poetry and things like that."

"I fear," said the father, "thou dost not love thy book."

"I do, sir; yet I love my sports better," said Dickie, and looked up to
meet the fond, proud look of eyes as blue as his own.

"Thou'rt a good, modest lad," said his father when they began their
third round of the garden, "not once to ask for what I promised thee."

Dickie could not stand this. "I might have asked," he said presently,
"but I have forgot what the promise was--the fever----"

"Ay, ay, poor lad! And of a high truth, too! Owned he had forgot! Come,
jog that poor peaked remembrance."

Dickie could hardly believe the beautiful hope that whispered in his
ear.

"I almost think I remember," he said. "Father--did you promise----?"

"I promised, if thou wast a good lad and biddable and constant at thy
book and