"Mr. Saville is a coxcomb, and you are another!" replied the father,
who, dressed in an old flannel dressing-gown, with a worn velvet cap
on his head, and cowering gloomily over a wretched fire, seemed no bad
personification of that mixture of half-hypochondriac, half-miser, which
he was in reality. "Don't talk to me of going to town, sir, or--"

"Father," interrupted Percy, in a cool and nonchalant tone, as he
folded his arms, and looked straight and shrewdly on the paternal
face--"father, let us understand each other. My schooling, I suppose, is
rather an expensive affair?"

"You may well say that, sir! Expensive!--It is frightful, horrible,
ruinous!--Expensive! Twenty pounds a year board and Latin; five guineas
washing; five more for writing and arithmetic. Sir, if I were not
resolved that you should not want education, though you may want
fortune, I should--yes, I should--what do you mean, sir?--you are
laughing! Is this your respect, your gratitude to your father?"

A slight shade fell over the bright and intelligent countenance of the
boy.

"Don't let us talk of gratitude," said he sadly; "Heaven knows what
either you or I have to be grateful for! Fortune has left to your proud
name but these bare walls and a handful of barren acres; to me she gave
a father's affection--not such as Nature had made it, but cramped and
soured by misfortunes."

Here Percy paused, and his father seemed also struck and affected.
"Let us," renewed in a lighter strain this singular boy, who might have
passed, by some months, his sixteenth year,--"let us see if we cannot
accommodate matters to our mutual satisfaction. You can ill afford my
schooling, and I am resolved that at school I will not stay. Saville is
a relation of ours; he has taken a fancy to me; he has even hinted that
he may leave me his fortune; and he has promised, at least, to afford
me a home and his tuition as long as I like. Give me free passport
hereafter to come and go as I list, and I in turn, will engage never to
cost you another shilling. Come, sir, shall it be a compact?"

"You wound me, Percy," said the father, with a mournful pride in his
tone; "I have not deserved this, at least from you. You know not,
boy--you know not all that has hardened this heart; but to you it has
not been hard, and a taunt from you--yes, that is the serpent's tooth!"

Percy in an instant was at his father's feet; he seized both his hands,
and burst into a passionate fit of tea