Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/185

179 How patient and good Jasper's mother was to three mischievous, active boys, and how unceasingly, wisely kind was Felix Brighton! He has done much for us, Jasper and me, and he would, if he could, have made a man of Anthony.

"He was not like the other two of us, we could see that even when we were children. He was quicker and more clever than we, and he was better, or at least wiser, at holding his tongue and keeping his temper when the occasion served. But the key to his whole character was that he could never see any possession in the hands of another without instinctively wishing to have it for himself. I have seen him move heaven and earth to get something that he did not really want, merely because it seemed of value when it belonged to some one else. There was no one more clever than he at acquiring what he desired.

"Felix Brighton prospered greatly, but he never moved out of the comfortable farmhouse of which we were all so fond. It became very beautiful under his hands, extended and improved and filled with the rarest treasures of his gathering. He was especially fond of pictures, so that there was a wealth of portraits and landscapes that he had collected or inherited, that glowed like jewels on the mellow old walls. He did us unnumbered kindnesses when we were boys, and when, on growing up, we decided that we would all three be lawyers, he set us up as partners, Peyton, Crawford & Brighton. We felt