You could not see a prettier old house than Yalton in all the eastern shires. It had the mixture of French with native Scotch architecture which distinguishes a period in history. There were turrets, which the profane called pepper-boxes, at the corners, and lines of many windows in the commodious, comfortable corps de logis, now shining through the night with cheerful lights. Two terraces stood between the altitude of the house and the walk in which the father and son were, with lines of stone balustrades all overgrown by creeping plants and adorned with great vases in which the garish flowers of autumn were still fully blooming, though they were unseen in the darkness. On the lower level was the little temple of a fountain, which was reduced to a small and broken jet by age and negligence. The scent of the mignonette in the borders, the faint dripping of the water in the fountain, communicated to the atmosphere a little half-artificial speciality of character, like the terraces and great vases, not altogether natural to the locality, yet not uncongenial in its quaint double nationality. The two dark figures walking up and down, made visible by those red points, were yet undistinguishable, save by the fact that one was slim and slight, a boyish figure, and the other round and solid in the complete development of the man. The lad had been unfolding to his father the many novelties and wonders of his first year at the University, with that delightful force of conviction that such pleasant and wonderful experiences had never happened to anybody before which is the perennial belief of the young: while the father listened with that half-amused, half-pensive sympathy, made up of recollections fond and familiar, and the half-provoked, half-pleased sensation of amazement at finding those experiences re-embodied in the person of his son, which is habitual to the old. But, indeed, to say old is merely to express a comparative quality, for Mr. Dalyell of Yalton was a man under fifty, in the full force and vigour of life.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “Fred, it’s fine times for you now, my boy. But you must remember that life is not made up of bumps and bump-suppers, and that there are worse things than a proctor waiting for you, perhaps, round the next corner. I don’t want you not to play—but you must learn to work a little, too.”
“All right, father,” said Fred; “I’ll pull through. I sha’n’t disgrace the old house.”
“No,” said Mr. Dalyell. “I don’t suppose you will: but you might perhaps go a little farther than that.”
“I didn’t think,” said Fred, surprised, “that you intended me to do more than a good pass. I never supposed there was—any need for hard work.”
“Need? I never said there was need: but it does a young fellow good to be thought to work: even if it does no more it does that. It’s well for you to be thought to work, Fred.”
“If that’s all,” said the young man, “I don’t fancy I want to get a reputation in that way.”
“Then you’re a silly boy,” said his father. “It’s a capital thing to have a good reputation. You don’t know what it might do for you.”
“Well,” said the lad, with a laugh, “I don’t fancy that matters so much, so long as you do everything for me, father.”
“That’s just the point, Fred. That’s what I wanted to show you. I sha’n’t always be here to do everything for you.”