d for his health, and he
then deemed it safe to transfer his new idol to his Lares by the lakes.
During this interval the current of the younger Morton's life had indeed
flowed through flowers. At his age the cares of females were almost a
want as well as a luxury, and the sisters spoiled and petted him as much
as any elderly nymphs in Cytherea ever petted Cupid. They were good,
excellent, high-nosed, flat-bosomed spinsters, sentimentally fond of
their brother, whom they called "the poet," and dotingly attached to
children. The cleanness, the quiet, the good cheer of their neat abode,
all tended to revive and invigorate the spirits of their young guest,
and every one there seemed to vie which should love him the most. Still
his especial favourite was Mr. Spencer: for Spencer never went out
without bringing back cakes and toys; and Spencer gave him his pony; and
Spencer rode a little crop-eared nag by his side; and Spencer, in short,
was associated with his every comfort and caprice. He told them his
little history; and when he said how Philip had left him alone for long
hours together, and how Philip had forced him to his last and nearly
fatal journey, the old maids groaned, and the old bachelor sighed, and
they all cried in a breath, that "Philip was a very wicked boy." It was
not only their obvious policy to detach him from his brother, but it was
their sincere conviction that they did right to do so. Sidney began, it
is true, by taking Philip's part; but his mind was ductile, and he still
looked back with a shudder to the hardships he had gone through: and
so by little and little he learned to forget all the endearing and
fostering love Philip had evinced to him; to connect his name with dark
and mysterious fears; to repeat thanksgivings to Providence that he was
saved from him; and to hope that they might never meet again. In fact,
when Mr. Spencer learned from Sharp that it was through Captain Smith,
the swindler, that application had been made by Philip for news of his
brother, and having also learned before, from the same person, that
Philip had been implicated in the sale of a horse, swindled, if not
stolen, he saw every additional reason to widen the stream that flowed
between the wolf and the lamb. The older Sidney grew, the better he
comprehended and appreciated the motives of his protector--for he was
brought up in a formal school of propriety and ethics, and his mind
naturally revolted from all images of viol