"What a young scholar you are," says the Captain to the boy.
"Depend on't, he knows more than he tells," says the lawyer. "I think we will pack him off in the coach with the old lady."
"For construing a bit of Latin?" said the Captain, very good-naturedly.
"I would as lief go there as anywhere," Harry Esmond said, simply, "for there is nobody to care for me."
There must have been something touching in the child's voice, or in this description of his solitude, for the Captain looked at him very good-naturedly, and the trooper called Steele put his hand kindly on the lad's head, and said some words in the Latin language.
"What does he say?" says the lawyer.
"I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had learned to succor the miserable, and that's not your trade, Mr. Sheepskin," said the trooper.
"You had better leave Dick the Scholar alone, Mr. Corbett!" the Captain said. And Harry Esmond, always touched by a kind face and a kind word, felt very grateful to this good-natured champion.
The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach; and my Lady Isabella was consigned to that vehicle and sent off to Hexton, with her woman and the man-of-law to bear her company, a couple of troopers riding on either side of the coach. And Harry was left behind at the Hall, belonging, as it were, to nobody, and quite alone in the world. The Captain and a guard of men remained in possession there; and the soldiers, who were very good-natured and kind, ate my lord's mutton and drank his wine, and made themselves comfortable, as they well might do in such pleasant quarters.
After the departure of the countess, Dick the Scholar took Harry Esmond under his special protection, and would talk to him both of French and Latin, in which tongues the lad found that he was even more proficient than Scholar Dick. Hearing that he had learned them from a Jesuit, in the praise of whom and whose goodness Harry was never tired of speaking, Dick, rather to the boy's surprise, showed a great deal of theological science, and knowledge of the points at issue between the Catholic and Protestant churches; so that he and Harry would have hours of controversy together, with which conversations the long days of the trooper's stay at Castlewood were whiled away. Though the other troopers were all gentlemen, they seemed ignorant and vulgar to Harry Esmond, with the exception of this good-natured Corporal Steele, Scholar, although Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant were always kind to the lad.