before half the first day was over, what an infernal scrape he had
walked himself into! and what was his excuse? A wretched little boy,
sobbing and chuckling by turns, and yet who was clever enough to twist
Kenelm Chillingly round his finger; twist /him/, a man who thought
himself so much wiser than his parents,--a man who had gained honours
at the University,--a man of the gravest temperament,--a man of so
nicely critical a turn of mind that there was not a law of art or
nature in which he did not detect a flaw; that he should get himself
into this mess was, to say the least of it, an uncomfortable
reflection.

The boy himself, as Kenelm glanced at him from time to time, became
impish and Will-of-the-Wisp-ish. Sometimes he laughed to himself
loudly, sometimes he wept to himself quietly; sometimes, neither
laughing nor weeping, he seemed absorbed in reflection. Twice as they
came nearer to the town of Tor-Hadham, Kenelm nudged the boy, and
said, "My boy, I must talk with you;" and twice the boy, withdrawing
his arm from the nudge, had answered dreamily, "Hush! I am thinking."

And so they entered the town of Tor-Hadham, the cob very much done up.



CHAPTER III.

"NOW, young sir," said Kenelm, in a tone calm, but peremptory,--"now
we are in the town, where am I to take you? and wherever it be, there
to say good-by."

"No, not good-by. Stay with me a little bit. I begin to feel