This speech cut Philip to the heart. What, then, he had taken from the child a respectable and safe shelter—the sure provision of a life—and the child now reproached him! When this was said to him, the tears gushed from his eyes. "God forgive me, Sidney," said he, and turned away.
But then Sidney, who had the most endearing ways with him, seeing his brother so vexed, ran up and kissed him, and scolded himself for being naughty. Still the words were spoken, and their meaning rankled deep. Philip himself, too, was morbid in his excessive tenderness for this boy. There is a certain age, before the love for the sex commences, when the feeling of friendship is almost a passion. You see it constantly in girls and boys at school. It is the first vague craving of the heart after the master food of human life—Love. It has its jealousies, and humours, and caprices, like love itself. Philip was painfully acute to Sidney's affection, was jealous of every particle of it. He dreaded lest his brother should ever be torn from him.
He would start from his sleep at night, and go to Sidney's bed to see that he was there. He left him in the morning with forebodings—he returned in the dark with fear. Meanwhile the character of this young man, so sweet and tender to Sidney, was gradually becoming more hard and stern to others. He had now climbed to the post of command in that rude establishment; and premature command in any sphere tends to make men unsocial and imperious.
One day Mr. Stubmore called him into his own countinghouse, where stood a gentleman, with one hand in his coatpocket, the other tapping his whip against his boot.
"Philips, show this gentleman the brown mare. She is a beauty in harness, is she not? This gentleman wants a match for his pheaton."
"She must step very hoigh," said the gentleman, turning round: and Philip recognised the beau in the stage-coach. The recognition was simultaneous. The beau nodded, then whistled, and winked.
"Come, my man, I am at your service," said he.
Philip, with many misgivings, followed him across the yard. The gentleman then beckoned him to approach.
"You, sir,—moind, I never peach—setting up here in the honest line?
Dull work, honesty,—eh?"
"Sir, I really don't know you."