It was a relief then—­after being forced at one time or another to put aside or pigeon-hole a hundred questions on which Miss Quiney’s teaching and his father’s practice appeared at variance—­to find a point upon which the certainty of both converged.  Heaven and hell might be this or that; but in this world the poor deserved their place, and must be kept to it.

“That seems fine,” said Dicky, after a long pause.

“What seems fine?” His father, tasting the mutton with approval, had let slip his clue to the child’s thought.

“Why, that poor people have rights too, and we ought to stand up for them—­like you said,” answered Dicky, not too grammatically.

“They are our rights too, you see,” said his father.

Dicky did not see; but his eagerness jumped this gap in the argument.  “Papa,” he asked with a sudden flush, “did you ever stand up to a King on the poor people’s side, and fight—­and all that?”

“Well, you see”—­the Collector smiled—­“I was never called upon.  But it’s in the blood.  Has Miss Quiney ever told you about Oliver Cromwell?”

“Yes.  He cut off King Charles’s head. . . .  I don’t think Miss Quiney liked him for that, though she didn’t say so.”

The Collector was still smiling.  “He certainly helped to cut off King Charles’s head, and—­right or wrong—­it’s remembered against him.  But he did any amount of great things too.  He was a masterful man; and perhaps the reason why Miss Quiney held her tongue is that he happens to be an ancestor of ours, and she knew it.”

“Oliver Cromwell?” Dicky repeated the name slowly, with awe.

“He was my great-great-grandfather, and you can add on another ‘great’ for yourself.  I am called Oliver after him.  They even say,” added Captain Vyell, sipping his wine, “that I have some of his features; and so, perhaps, will you when you grow up.  But of your chance of that you shall judge before long.  I am having a copy of his portrait sent over from England.”

For a moment or two these last remarks scarcely penetrated to the boy’s hearing.  Like all boys, he naturally desired greatness; unlike most, he was conscious of standing above the crowd, but without a guess that he derived the advantage from anything better than accident.  His father had the good fortune to be rich.  For himself—­well, Dicky was born with one of those simple natures that incline rather to distrust than to overrate their own merits.  None the less he desired and loved greatness—­thus early, and throughout his life—­and it came as a tremendous, a magnificent shock to him that he enjoyed it as a birthright.  The repetition of “great”—­“he was my great-great-grandfather;” “you can add another ‘great’ for yourself”—­ hummed in his ears.  A full half a minute ticked by before he grasped at the remainder of his father’s speech, and, like a breaking twig, it dropped him to bathos.

“But—­but—­” Dicky passed a hand over his face—­“Miss Quiney said that Oliver Cromwell was covered with warts!”