Boys and Girls From Thackeray | Page 3

said.
Harry Esmond blushed: "I--I have supper with Mrs. Worksop," says he.
But the new Viscount Castlewood refused to hear of that, and said, "Thou shalt sup with us, Harry, to-night! Shan't refuse a lady, shall he, Trix?"--and Harry enjoyed the unexpected pleasure of an evening meal with the new lord of Castlewood and his gracious family.
Later, when Harry got to his little chamber, it was with a heart full of surprise and gratitude towards the new friends whom this happy day had brought him. The next morning he was up and watching long before the house was astir, longing to see that fair lady and her children again; and only fearful lest their welcome of the past night should in any way be withdrawn or altered. But presently little Beatrix came out into the garden, and her mother followed, who greeted Harry as kindly as before and listened while he told her the histories of the house, which he had been taught in the old lord's time, and to which she listened with great interest; and then he told her, with respect to the night before, that he understood French and thanked her for her protection.
"Do you?" says she, with a blush; "then, sir, you shall teach me and Beatrix."
And she asked him many more questions regarding himself, to which she received brief replies, the substance of which was afterward amplified into certain facts concerning the past of the orphan boy, which it is well to note here and now.
It seemed that in former days, in a little cottage in the village of Ealing, near to London, for some time had dwelt an old French refugee, by name Mr. Pastoureau, one of those whom the persecution of the Huguenots by the French king had brought over to England. With this old man lived a little lad, who went by the name of Henry Thomas, but who was no other than Henry Esmond. He remembered to have lived in another place a short time before, near to London, too, amongst looms and spinning wheels, and a great deal of psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of Frenchmen.
There he had a dear, dear friend, who died, and whom he called Aunt. She used to visit him in his dreams sometimes; and her face, though it was homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs. Pastoureau, Bon Papa Pastoureau's new wife, who came to live with him after aunt went away. And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived Uncle George, who was a weaver, too, but used to tell Harry that he was a little gentleman, and that his father was a captain, and his mother an angel.
When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and shake his head. He had a little room where he always used to preach and sing hymns out of his great old nose. Little Harry did not like the preaching; he liked better the fine stories which aunt used to tell him. Bon Papa's new wife never told him pretty stories; she quarrelled with Uncle George, and he went away.
After this, Harry's Bon Papa, and his wife and two children of her own that she had brought with her, came to live at Ealing. The new wife gave her children the best of everything, and Harry many a whipping, he knew not why. So he was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback, with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing. The unjust stepmother gave him plenty to eat before he went away, and did not beat him once, but told the children to keep their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, but he always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the rescue with arms like a flail. She only washed Harry's face the day he went away; nor ever so much as once boxed his ears. She whimpered rather when the gentleman in black came for the boy, and pretended to cry; but Harry thought it was only a sham, and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which the lackey helped him. This lackey was a Frenchman; his name was Blaise. The child could talk to him in his own language perfectly well. He knew it better than English, indeed, having lived hitherto among French people, and being called the Little Frenchman by other boys on Ealing Green.
The lackey was very talkative and informed the boy that the gentleman riding before him was my lord's chaplain, Father Holt; that he was now to