His Grace of Osmonde | Page 8

brown-eyed, ruddy little face grown solemn.
"A quiet woman in a place like mine cannot judge of Kings," she
answered; "but to be King is a grave thing."
"Grave!" cried he; "I thought it was very splendid. All England belongs
to him; he wears a gold crown and people kneel to kiss his hand. My
father and mother kneel to him when they go to the Court."
"That is why it is grave," said Mistress Rebecca. "All the people look to
him for their example. Because he is their head they follow him. He can
lead them to good or evil. He can help England to be honest or base. He
is the KING."
The little fellow looked out upon the fair scene spread before him.
Many thoughts he could not yet have found words for welled up within
him and moved him vaguely.
"He is the King," he repeated, softly; "he is the King!"
Mistress Rebecca looked at him with tender, searching eyes. She had,
through her own thoughts, learned how much these small
creatures--sometimes dealt with so carelessly--felt when they were too
young for phrases, and how much, also, they remembered their whole
lives through.
"He is the King," she said, "and a King must think of his people. A
Duke, too, must think of his--as his Grace, your father, thinks, never
dealing lightly with his great name or his great house, or those of whom
he is governor."
The boy climbed upon her knee and sat there, leaning against her as he
loved to do. His eyes rested on the far edge of the farthest purple moor,
behind which the sun seemed to be slipping away into some other

world he knew not of. The little clouds floating in the high blue sky
were rosy where they were not golden; a flock of rooks was flying
slowly homeward over the tree-tops, cawing lazily as they came. A
great and beautiful stillness seemed to rest on all the earth, and his little
mind was full of strange ponderings, leading him through labyrinths of
dreams he would remember and comprehend the deep meaning of only
when he was a man. Somehow all his thoughts were trooping round
about a rich and brilliant figure which was a sort of image standing to
him for the personality of his Most Sacred Majesty King Charles the
Second--the King who was not quite a King, though all England looked
to him, and he could lead it to good or evil.

CHAPTER III
Sir Jeoffry Wildairs
It was not common in those days for young gentlemen of quality to
love their books too dearly; in truth, men of all ranks and ages were
given rather to leaving learning and the effort to acquire it to those who
depended upon professions to gain their bread for them. Men of rank
and fortune had too many amusements which required no aid from
books, which, indeed, were not greatly the fashion. For country
gentlemen there was hunting, coursing, cock-fights, the exhilarating
watching of cudgelling bouts between yokels, besides visiting, and
much eating and drinking and smoking of tobacco while jovial, and
sometimes not too fastidious stories were told. When a man went up to
town he had other pleasures to fill his time, and whether he was a
country gentleman making his yearly visit or a fashionable rake and
beau, his entertainment was not usually derived from books, a man who
spent much time with them being indeed generally regarded as a
milksop. But from the time when he lay stretched upon his nursery
floor and gazed at pictures and lettering he had not learned to read, the
little Marquess had a fondness for books. He learned to read early, and
once having learned, was never so full of pleasure as when he had a
volume to pore over. At first he revelled in stories of magicians, giants,
afrits, and gnomes, but as soon as his tutors took him in hand he
wakened every day to some new interest. Languages ancient and
modern he learned with great rapidity, having a special fondness for

them, and at thirteen could speak French, high Dutch, and Italian
excellently well for his years, besides having a scholarly knowledge of
Latin and Greek. His tutor, Mr. Fox, an elderly scholar of honourable
birth and many attainments, was as proud of his talents and
advancement as his female attendants had been of his strength and
beauty in his infancy. This gentleman, whose income had been reduced
by misfortune, who had lost his wife and children tragically by one
illness, and who had come to undertake his pupil an almost
brokenhearted man, found in the promise of this young mind a solace
he had never hoped to know again.
"I have taught young gentlemen before,"