woods and gardens. A kinder parent does not breathe than he. Well I
remember how he tossed me in his arms under that tree when I had thrashed
another lad for speaking ill of him. He called me his knight. In all my
life he has never broken faith with me. When they were blasting down a
wall where those palings now stand, he promised me I should see it done,
and had it rebuilt and blown down again because I had missed the sight.
All he ever exacted of me was that I should treat him as an elder
brother. He had his own notion of the world I was going into, and
prepared me accordingly. He took me from Eton to Spa, where I learned
gaming instead of Greek, and gave me so much a night to risk at play."

I looked at him in astonishment. To say that I thought these relations
strange would have been a waste of words.

"To be sure," Charles continued, "I was bound to learn, and could acquire
no younger." He flicked the glossy red backs of his horses with his
whip. "You are thinking it an extraordinary education, I know," he added
rather sadly. "I hav a-told you this--God knows why! Yes, because I
like you damnably, and you would have heard worse elsewhere, both of him
and of me. I fear you have listened to the world's opinion of Lord
Holland."

Indeed, I had heard a deal of that nobleman's peculations of the public
funds. But in this he was no worse than the bulk of his colleagues.
His desertion of William Pitt I found hard to forgive.

"The best father in the world, Richard!" cried Charles. "If his former
friends could but look into his kind heart, and see him in his home,
they would not have turned their backs upon him. I do not mean such
scoundrels as Rigby. And now my father is in exile half the year in