Henry Charles was in almost every sense a direct contrast to his father. Taller than the latter already, although not yet sixteen years of age, he was lean and sallow of appearance, with long, narrow, ungainly features, redeemed from plainness only by the intensity of his glowing brown eyes. By several years the oldest lad at the church school, where Mr. Arnold Page retailed his somewhat limited store of learning to some forty scholars, Henry was the scandal of the village. To the good folk of Hampton it seemed almost a temptation of Providence to keep a lad at school after he was twelve years of age, and to them Henry was a byword for laziness and the possibilities of a shameful end. Often would the postmaster's cronies assure him that he could hope for no good to come of such conduct. At the "Wings and Spur" almost any evening "that long, lanky, lumbering lout of a good-for-nothing, 'Enry Charles," was quoted in conversation as an example of the follies a man could commit who had once gone so far out of his natural station as to visit London and admire "book-larnin'."
"It's downright sinful, I calls it, to keep a led at school arter twelve years of age, when 'e moite be earnin' three shillin' a week a-doin' of some honest werk."
This was the opinion enunciated more than once by Mr. Miffin in the taproom of the inn, and always assented to with acclamation by the company.
But Henry was sublimely unconscious of the interest he created, and his father was stoutly determined in the course he would pursue. So the youth continued to read all the books that came his way, to dream dreams of lands that lay beyond eye-scope of Hampton Bagot. If the main road through the village went to Stratford-on-Avon, it did not stay there for Henry, and when it did go there it carried his thoughts to the home of his favourite author.
It was, perhaps, the very fact of Hampton's nearness to the shrine of Shakespeare that set the postmaster's boy thinking of books and the life of letters. Already he dwelt in an enchanted land whither none else in Hampton had ever wandered, and from the printed page he had built up for himself a city of his own—a city with the familiar name of London. There, as his father had told him—for had not Edward John trod its streets for two whole days?—lived the great men of letters, their busy pens plying on countless sheets of paper, and, like the touch of magic wands, conjuring up for their holders fame and fortune.
Edward John Charles was truly a phenomenon—a bookseller in the tiniest way, who had become imbued with some idea of the dignity of literature, and esteemed its exponents in inverse ratio to his own unlettered condition; thought of his scanty schooling being the one shadow which ever darkened his brow.
To this fairy London, this home of learning, this emporium of all the graces, Henry Charles looked forward in his day-dreams, while his neighbours lamented his father's folly in not setting him to hoe potatoes, or at least to sell ounces of shag.
"The led is struck on books; it's books with 'im mornin', noon, an' night, and I ain't the man to stand in 'is way," quoth Edward John, in expostulation with a friendly neighbour who advised him to put Henry to work. "I don't know what 'e's going to be, or what's in 'im; but whatever it is, the led shall 'ave his chance."
And when Edward John Charles said a thing he meant it.