little in common in any way, so that he was rather respected than
liked by them. But he was wonderfully kind to me, and if my love
for him was qualified with awe, it was from reverence, and not from
fear.

My frail appearance, on which the neighbors jested, caused my
father to look on me sometimes with an anxious eye, and he would
question the housekeeper and the maids about my appetite, and
whether I slept well o' nights. On these matters he need not have
had any concern, since I ate four hearty meals a day, with perhaps
an apple or a hunk of bread in between; while as for sleeping,
Mistress Pennyquick was wont to declare, five out of the seven
mornings in the week, when she woke me, that she knew I would sleep
my brains away. This prediction scarcely troubled me, and since the
motherly creature never disturbed me until I had slept a good nine
hours by the clock, I do not think she was really distressed on
this score.

Until I reached my eleventh birthday I did not go to school, being
taught to read and write and cipher by my father himself. But one
day he set me before him on his horse and rode into Shrewsbury,
where, after a solemn interview with Mr. Lloyd, the master, I was
put into the accidence class at King Edward's famous school. As we
rode back, I remember that my father, who was generally so silent,
talked to me more than ever before, about school, and work, and the
great men who had been in past time pupils in the same school,
notably Sir Phillip Sidney. And from that day I used to trudge
every morning, barring holidays, into the town, and say my hic,
haec, hoc as well, I verily believe, as the rest of my schoolfellows.