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140 There was a glorious dinner, and Dickie waited on this new father of his, changed his plate, and poured wine out of a silver jug into the silver cup that my lord drank from. And after dinner the dear lady-mother must go all over the house to see everything, because she had been so long away, and Dickie walked in the garden among the ripe apples and grapes with his father's hand on his shoulder, the happiest, proudest boy in all Deptford—or in all Kent either.

His father asked what he had learned, and Dickie told, dwelling, perhaps, more on the riding, and the fencing, and the bowls, and the music than on the sour-faced tutor's side of the business.

"But I've learned a lot of Greek and Latin, too," he added in a hurry, "and poetry and things like that."

"I fear," said the father, "thou dost not love thy book."

"I do, sir; yet I love my sports better," said Dickie, and looked up to meet the fond, proud look of eyes as blue as his own.

"Thou'rt a good, modest lad," said his father when they began their third round of the garden, "not once to ask for what I promised thee."

Dickie could not stand this. "I might have asked," he said presently, "but I have forgot what the promise was—the fever"

"Ay, ay, poor lad! And of a high truth, too! Owned he had forgot! Come, jog that poor peaked remembrance."