His father flashed a twinkling eye at him. Just sometimes Hans Caspar wondered whether there might not be more in this poor creature of a son of his than appeared.
"How like em!" he mused. "Yet I've an immense admiration for the Church as a commercial concern. Look at the business they've built up. Look at the property they've accumulated. Look at the way the Ecclesiastical Commissioners sweat blood out of the foulest slums in Christendom. They deserve to succeed. Do it all in such style too. House their head-managers in palaces, and pay em £15,000 a year—and perks—and plenty of em. The Hanseatic League was nothing to em."
The young man's eyes became quizzical. Then he began to titter in the feeble and deprecatory way of one who half dissents and dares not say so.
The door opened quietly. Hans Caspar, standing in the bow, turned round.
A small brown-smocked figure, a-stride a dappled grey horse, looked in; and a lovely little singing voice like that of water pouring from a jug, said in a slight stutter with mysterious intimacy,
"Daddy!"
The little lad stood smiling in the door, the image of his father, of his father's mother, of the Cavalier upon the wall, of those high-bred, rather ineffective faces that look down on visitors from the famous portrait-gallery at Ravensrood, the Somersetshire home of the Beauregards.
Edward Caspar sat and sweated.
It was of course the elder man who spoke first.
"Hullo, youngster!" he called cheerily. "What might be your name?"