But my story does not follow him.
Reginald was over ten years old, and Compton nearly six. They were as different in character as complexion—both remarkable boys.
Reginald, Sir Charles's favorite, was a wonderful boy for riding, running, talking; and had a downright genius for melody; he whistled to the admiration of the village, and latterly he practiced the fiddle in woods and under hedges, being aided and abetted therein by a gypsy boy whom he loved, and who, indeed, provided the instrument.
He rode with Sir Charles, and rather liked him; his brother he never noticed, except to tease him. Lady Bassett he admired, and almost loved her while she was in the act of playing him undeniable melodies. But he liked his nurse Meyrick better, on the whole; she flattered him more, and was more uniformly subservient.
With these two exceptions he despised the whole race of women, and affected male society only, especially of grooms, stable-boys, and gypsies; these last welcomed him to their tents, and almost prostrated themselves before him, so dazzled were they by his beauty and his color. It is believed they suspected him of having gypsy blood in his veins. They let him into their tents, and even into some of their secrets, and he promised them they should have it all their own way as soon as he was Sir Reginald; he had outgrown his original theory that he was to be Sir Charles on his father's death.
He hated in-doors; when fixed by command to a book, would beg hard to be allowed to take it into the sun; and at night would open his window and poke his black head out to wash in the moonshine, as he said.
He despised ladies and gentlemen, said they were all affected fools, and gave imitations of all his father's guests to prove it; and so keen was this child of nature's eye for affectation that very often his disapproving parents were obliged to confess the imp had seen with his fresh eye defects custom had made them overlook, or the solid good qualities that lay beneath had overbalanced.
Now all this may appear amusing and eccentric, and so on, to strangers; but after the first hundred laughs or so with which paternal indulgence dismisses the faults of childhood, Sir Charles became very grave.
The boy was his darling and his pride. He was ambitious for him. He earnestly desired to solve for him a problem which is as impossible as squaring the circle, viz., how to transmit our experience to our children. The years and the health he had wasted before he knew Bella Bruce, these he resolved his successor should not waste. He looked higher for this beautiful boy than for himself. He had fully resolved to be member for the county one day; but he did not care about it for himself; it was only to pave the way for his successor; that Sir Reginald, after a long career in the Commons, might find his way into the House of Peers, and so obtain dignity in exchange for antiquity; for, to tell the truth, the ancestors of four-fifths of the British House of Peers had been hewers of wood and drawers of water at a time when these Bassetts had already been gentlemen of distinction for centuries.
All this love and this vicarious ambition were now mortified daily. Some fathers could do wonders for a brilliant boy, and with him; they expect him, and a dull boy appears; that is a bitter pill; but this was worse. Reginald was a sharp boy; he could do anything; fasten him to a book for twenty minutes, he would learn as much as most boys in an hour; but there was no keeping him to it, unless you strapped him or nailed him, for he had the will of a mule, and the suppleness of an eel to carry out his will. And then his tastes—low as his features were refined; he was a sort of moral dung-fork; picked up all the slang of the stable and scattered it in the dining-room and drawing-room; and once or twice he stole out of his comfortable room at night, and slept in a gypsy's tent with his arm round a gypsy boy, unsullied from his cradle by soap.