English perfectly, and to forget some of his French: children forget
easily. Some earlier and fainter recollections the child had of a
different country; and a town with tall white houses: and a ship. But
these were quite indistinct in the boy's mind, as indeed the memory of
Ealing soon became, at least of much that he suffered there.

The lackey before whom he rode was very lively and voluble, and informed
the boy that the gentleman riding before him was my lord's chaplain,
Father Holt--that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond--that my
Lord Viscount Castlewood was his parrain--that he was to live at the
great house of Castlewood, in the province of ----shire, where he would
see Madame the Viscountess, who was a grand lady. And so, seated on a
cloth before Blaise's saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and to
a fine square called Covent Garden, near to which his patron lodged.

Mr. Holt, the priest, took the child by the hand, and brought him to
this nobleman, a grand languid nobleman in a great cap and flowered
morning-gown, sucking oranges. He patted Harry on the head and gave him
an orange.

"C'est bien ca," he said to the priest after eying the child, and the
gentleman in black shrugged his shoulders.

"Let Blaise take him out for a holiday," and out for a holiday the boy
and the valet went. Harry went jumping along; he was glad enough to go.

He will remember to his life's end the delights of those days. He was
taken to see a play by Monsieur Blaise, in a house a thousand times
greater and finer than the booth at Ealing Fair--and on the next happy
day they took water on the river, and Harry saw London Bridge, with the