When the entire Charles family were seated at the supper-table, the auspicious moment had arrived for Edward John to disclose his hand. Whatever he thought fit to arrange would be good. Mrs. Charles, a thin little person, who worshipped her ample husband from afar, and spent her life in cleaning the five living rooms which constituted their household, never removing the curl-papers from her hair until after tea, was certain to applaud his every opinion, while the three girls, the eldest of whom bore the burden of the business on her shoulders, could be depended upon for reserve support.
When Mr. Charles had detailed the arrangements he had made, whereby Henry was to enter the business of Mr. Ephraim Griggs, there was unanimous approval.
"I've always said, 'Enry, that you'd 'ave your chance, and 'ere it is," said Mr. Charles, brushing some crumbs of cheese from his whisker. "There is no sayin' what this may lead to. Some of the greatest men in the world 'ave started lower down the ladder than that."
"Yes, dad," responded the delighted Henry. "Why, Shakespeare himself used to hold horses for gentlemen in London."
"Just look at that," beamed Mr. Charles on his worshipping family. "Shakespeare uster 'old 'osses. You'll never need to do that, my boy."
"And his father was only a woolstapler, dad!" panted the youth.
"A common woolstapler! Think on't! And me in the book-line—in a small way, p'raps—but in the book-line, for all that."
And the thought that a woolstapler's son who had been fain to tend horses for a penny, and in the end had achieved deathless fame which brought admirers from the ends of the earth to his humble birthplace in Stratford-on-Avon, made Edward John look around his own little house, and wonder how many years it would be before the world was trooping to Hampton Bagot to gaze on the early home of Henry Charles. Hampton was only a few miles from Stratford, and Henry would never be so low as the holding of horses.
We can but dimly realise the joy with which Henry received the news of the opening his father had made for him. To a lad of his temperament he already saw himself a chartered libertine in the realms of literature, roving from book to book on the crowded shelves of Mr. Griggs; here following the doughty deeds of some of Sir Walter's heroes, taking a hand, perchance, in the rescue of his heroines, and anon communing with such glorious company as Addison and Lamb and Hazlitt. Had he not read and re-read, and remembered every chapter of that classic work of which his father had sold as many as seven copies in six months to the Hamptonians—"Famous Boyhoods," by Uncle Jim? Within the gold-encrusted covers of that enchanting book had he not learned how Charles Dickens used to paste labels on jam-pots before he found fame and fortune in a bottle of ink? Was not he aware that Robert Burns had been a ploughman, and were not ploughmen in Hampton Bagot as common as hay-ricks and as poor as mice? Had not Oliver Goldsmith been hard put to it often to find a dinner, while Henry Charles had never lacked a meal? And had not Dr. Johnson, who received a ludicrously large sum of money for making a dictionary, lived in a garret? Emphatically, Henry Charles had reason to look the future in the face clear-eyed, and to bless Uncle Jim for giving him those inspiring facts. Moreover, a famous author had said: "In the lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail." Had not Henry copied these lines in atrocious handwriting till they swam before his eyes, and had not his schoolmaster assured him his penmanship was the worst he had ever witnessed, and were not all great authors wretched penmen? True, he still had doubts as to what "the lexicon of youth" might be.
Unlike his father, Henry was not a talkative person, and, indeed, it was one of the black marks against him in popular opinion that he did not make himself as sociable as he might have done with the lads of Hampton. But weighted with such news, the need to noise it abroad was pressing, and as soon as he could slip away from the supper-table he was publishing the intelligence wherever a chance opening could be found.