“Harold!”
CHAPTER XVI.
Captain Rothesay found himself at breakfast on the sixth morning of his stay at Harbury—so swiftly had the time flown. But he felt a purer and a happier man every hour that he spent with his ancient friend.
The breakfast-room was Harold's study. It was more that of a man of science and learning than that of a clergyman. Beside Leighton and Flavel were placed Bacon and Descartes; dust lay upon John Newton's Sermons, while close by, rested in honoured, well-thumbed tatters, his great namesake, who read God's scriptures in the stars. In one corner by a large, unopened packet—marked “Religious Society's Tracts;” it served as a stand for a large telescope, whose clumsiness betrayed the ingenuity of home manufacture. The theological contents of the library was a vast mass of polemical literature, orthodox and heterodox, including all faiths, all variations of sect. Mahomet and Swedenborg, Calvin and the Talmud, lay side by side; and on the farthest shelf was the great original of all creeds—the Book of books.
On this morning, as on most others, Harold Gwynne did not appear until after prayers were over. His mother read them, as indeed she always did morning and evening. A stranger might have said, that her doing so was the last lingering token of her sway as “head of the household.”
Harold entered, his countenance bearing the pallid restless look of one who lies half-dreaming in bed, long after he is awake and ought to have risen. His mother saw it.
“You are not right, Harold. I had far rather that you rose at six and studied till nine, as formerly, than that you should dream away the morning hours, and come down looking as you do now. Forgive me, but it is not good for you, my son.”
She often called him my son with a beautiful simplicity, that reminded one of the holy Hebrew mothers—of Rebekah or of Hannah.
Harold looked for a moment disconcerted—not angry. “Do not mind me, mother; I shall go back to study in good time. Let me do as I judge best.”