lease, to put away
these books? And may I have Winter to fetch me? I--I'm tired. If you
don't mind? I don't care to walk."

Yet, since happily at thirteen Richard's moods were still as many and
changeful as the aspects of that same April day, he enjoyed some
royally unclouded hours before he--most unwillingly--retired to bed
that night. For on close acquaintance the great Ulysses proved a very
satisfactory hero. Roger Ormiston's character had consolidated. It was
to some purpose that he had put away the pleasant follies of his youth.
He looked out now with a coolness and patience, born of wide experience,
upon men and upon affairs. He had ceased to lose either his temper or
his head. Acquiescing with undismayed and cheerful common sense in
the fact that life, as we know it, is but a sorry business, and that
rough things must of necessity be done and suffered every day, he had
developed an active--though far from morbidly sentimental--compassion
for the individual, man and beast alike. Not that Colonel Ormiston
formulated all that, still less held forth upon it. He was content, as
is so many another Englishman, to be a dumb and practical philosopher--for
which those who have lived with philosophers of the eloquent sort will
unquestionably give thanks, knowing, to their sorrow, how often
handsome speech is but a cloak to hide incapacity of honest doing.

And so, after dinner, under plea of an imperative need of cigars,
Ormiston had borne Dickie off to the Gun-Room; and there, in the
intervals of questioning him a little about his tastes and occupations,
had told him stories many and great. For he wanted to get hold of the
boy and judge of what stuff he was made. Like all sound and
healthy-minded men he had an inherent suspicion of the abnormal. He
could not but fear that persons unusually constituted in body must be
the victims of some corresponding crookedness of spirit. But as the
evening drew on he became easy on this point. Whatever Richard's
physical infirmity, his nature was wholesome enough. Therefore when, at
close upon ten o'clock, Lady Calmady arrived in person to insist that
Dickie must go, there and then, straight to bed, she found a pleasant
scene awaiting her.

The square room was gay with lamplight and firelight, which brought
into strong relief the pictures of famous horses and trophies of
old-time weapons--matchlocks, basket-handled swords, and neat
silver-hilted rapiers, prettiest of toys with which t