“I will,” said Sir Christopher.
“My dear Findlater,” cried Clarence, when
Lord St. George was gone, “did you not tell
me, some time ago, that Collard was a great rascal,
and very intimate with Jefferies? and now you recommend
him to Lord St. George!”
“Hush, hush, hush!” said the baronet;
“he was a great rogue to be sure: but,
poor fellow, he came to me yesterday with tears in
his eyes, and said he should starve if I would not
give him a character; so what could I do?”
“At least, tell Lord St. George the truth,”
observed Clarence.
“But then Lord St. George would not take him!”
rejoined the good-hearted Sir Christopher, with forcible
naivete. “No, no, Linden, we must not
be so hard-hearted; we must forgive and forget;”
and so saying, the baronet threw out his chest, with
the conscious exultation of a man who has uttered
a noble sentiment. The moral of this little
history is that Lord St. George, having been pillaged
“through thick and thin,” as the proverb
has it, for two years, at last missed a gold watch,
and Monsieur Collard finished his career as his exemplary
tutor, Mr. John Jefferies, had done before him.
Ah! what a fine thing it is to have a good heart!
But to return. Just as our wanderers had arrived
at the farther end of the park, Lady Westborough and
her daughter passed them. Clarence, excusing
himself to his friend, hastened towards them, and was
soon occupied in saying the prettiest things in the
world to the prettiest person, at least in his eyes;
while Sir Christopher, having done as much mischief
as a good heart well can do in a walk of an hour,
returned home to write a long letter to his mother,
against “learning and all such nonsense, which
only served to blunt the affections and harden the
heart.”
“Admirable young man!” cried the mother,
with tears in her eyes. “A good heart
is better than all the heads in the world.”
Amen!
“Make way, Sir Geoffrey Peveril, or you will
compel me to do that I may be sorry for!”
“You shall make no way here but at your peril,”
said Sir Geoffrey;” this is my ground.”—Peveril
of the Peak.
One night on returning home from a party at Lady Westborough’s
in Hanover Square, Clarence observed a man before
him walking with an uneven and agitated step.
His right hand was clenched, and he frequently raised
it as with a sudden impulse, and struck fiercely as
if at some imagined enemy.
The stranger slackened his pace. Clarence passed
him, and, turning round to satisfy the idle curiosity
which the man’s eccentric gestures had provoked,
his eye met a dark, lowering, iron countenance, which,
despite the lapse of four years, he recognized on the
moment: it was Wolfe, the republican.
