Archie's heart in its own tongue. He conceived the ambition to be such
another; and, when the day came for him to choose a profession, it was
in emulation of Lord Glenalmond, not of Lord Hermiston, that he chose
the Bar. Hermiston looked on at this friendship with some secret pride,
but openly with the intolerance of scorn. He scarce lost an opportunity
to put them down with a rough jape; and, to say truth, it was not
difficult, for they were neither of them quick. He had a word of
contempt for the whole crowd of poets, painters, fiddlers, and their
admirers, the bastard race of amateurs, which was continually on his
lips. "Signor Feedle-eerie!" he would say. "O, for Goad's sake, no
more of the Signor!"

"You and my father are great friends, are you not?" asked Archie once.

"There is no man that I more respect, Archie," replied Lord Glenalmond.
"He is two things of price. He is a great lawyer, and he is upright as
the day."

"You and he are so different," said the boy, his eyes dwelling on those
of his old friend, like a lover's on his mistress's.

"Indeed so," replied the judge; "very different. And so I fear are you
and he. Yet I would like it very ill if my young friend were to
misjudge his father. He has all the Roman virtues: Cato and Brutus were
such; I think a son's heart might well be proud of such an ancestry of
one."

"And I would sooner he were a plaided herd," cried Archie, with sudden
bitterness.