he), suppose a good citizen,
who had seen his Majesty take refuge there, had been asked, "Is King
Charles up that oak-tree?" His duty would have been not to say, Yes--so
that the Cromwellians should seize the king and murder him like his
father--but No; his Majesty being private in the tree, and therefore not to
be seen there by loyal eyes: all which instruction, in religion and
morals, as well as in the rudiments of the tongues and sciences, the boy
took eagerly and with gratitude from his tutor. When, then, Holt was gone,
and told Harry not to see him, it was as if he had never been. And he had
this answer pat when he came to be questioned a few days after.

The Prince of Orange was then at Salisbury, as young Esmond learned from
seeing Doctor Tusher in his best cassock (though the roads were muddy, and
he never was known to wear his silk, only his stuff one, a-horseback),
with a great orange cockade in his broad-leafed hat, and Nahum, his clerk,
ornamented with a like decoration. The doctor was walking up and down, in
front of his parsonage, when little Esmond saw him, and heard him say he
was going to pay his duty to his highness the prince, as he mounted his
pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The village people had orange
cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith's laughing daughter pinned one
into Harry's old hat, which he tore out indignantly when they bid him to
cry, "God save the Prince of Orange and the Protestant religion!" but the
people only laughed, for they liked the boy in the village, where his
solitary condition moved the general pity, and where he found friendly
welcomes and faces in many houses. Father Holt had many friends there too,
for he not only would fight the blacksmith at theology, never losing his
temper, but laughing the whole time in his pleasant way, but he cured him
of an ague with quinquina, and was always ready with a kind word for any
man that asked it, so that they said in the village 'twas a pity the two
were Papists.

The director and the Vicar of Castlewood agreed very well; indeed, the
former was a perfectly bred gentleman, and it was the latter's business to
agree with everybody. Doctor Tusher and the lady's maid, his spouse, had a
boy who was about the age of little Esmond; and there was such a
friendship between the lads, as propinquity and tolerable kindness and
good humour on either side would be pretty sure to occasion. Tom Tusher
was sent off early however to a school