‘Ay, sweet; this is love. Let it rest untaxed. It is enough to know such confidence in store for me against a day when to bear my burden longer alone were perchance to see me sink under it. So, you will be happy? It is a brave and fair country, is it not? and, for the house, Nol and our laughter shall mend its glooms. I lived here once, Brion.’
‘So Clerivault told me, Sir.’
‘He is a gossip, that. Dost love him too?’
‘I love him much, Uncle.’
‘A little mad, though—eh?’
‘I think a little madness spices life.’
The other laughed.
‘Heart! so it may. Well, he shall be answerable for thine outward parts; act Chiron to thy Diomed; exercise thy limbs in sport and chase and make a skilful swordsman of thee. For thine inner, I must account; rub up my Greek and Latin; look to thine education. Wilt thou be a creditable pupil?’
‘I will be a willing one.’
‘That’s sure. I see a life before us of full content—a happy round of simple toils and sober pleasures, asking no more than health and a quiet mind. What is vext Fortune but a gilded sore? A curse on the lust for riches, which, like the fairy gold, turn to ashes in the hands of him that grasps them with a covetous heart. I am gratefuller being poor and lowly. Dost thou hear, child? I am poor at last. Will it turn thee from me?’