"Ah, my dear! what was that very clever remark you made at the same time which so pleased your father—something about Jews and the college?"
"Jews and—oh! 'pulverem Olympicum collegisse juvat,' my dear mother—which means, that it is a pleasure to take a pinch out of a brave man's snuff-box. I say, mother, put down the posset. Yes, I'll take it; I will, indeed. Now, then, sit here—that's right—and tell me all you know about this famous old Captain. Imprimis, he is older than my father?"
"To be sure!" exclaimed my mother indignantly; "he looks twenty years older; but there is only five years' real difference. Your father must always look young."
"And why does Uncle Roland put that absurd French de before his name—and why were my father and he not good friends—and is he married—and has he any children?"
Scene of this conference—my own little room, new papered on purpose for my return for good—trellis-work paper, flowers and birds—all so fresh, and so new, and so clean, and so gay—with my books ranged in neat shelves, and a writing-table by the window; and, without the window, shines the still summer moon. The window is a little open; you scent the flowers and new-mown hay. Past eleven; and the boy and his dear mother are all alone.
"My dear, my dear! you ask so many questions at once."
"Don't answer them then. Begin at the beginning, as Nurse Primmins does with her fairy tales—'Once on a time.'"
"Once on a time, then," said my mother—kissing me between the eyes—"once on a time, my love, there was a certain clergyman in Cumberland, who had two sons; he had but a small living, and the boys were to make their own way in the world. But close to the parsonage, on the brow of a hill, rose an old ruin, with one tower left, and this, with half the county round it, had once belonged to the clergyman's family; but all had been sold—all gone piece by piece, you see, my dear, except the presentation to the living, (what they call the advowson was sold too,) which had been secured to the last of the family. The elder of these sons was your Uncle Roland, the younger was your father. Now I believe the first quarrel arose from the absurdest thing possible, as your father says; but Roland was exceedingly touchy on all things connected with his ancestors. He was always poring over the old pedigree, or wandering amongst the ruins, or reading books of knight-errantry. Well, where this pedigree began I know not, but it seems that King Henry II. gave some lands in Cumberland to one Sir Adam de Caxton; and from that time, you see, the pedigree went regularly from father to son till Henry V.; then, apparently from the disorders, produced, as your father says, by the wars of the Roses, there was a sad blank left—only one or two names, without dates or marriages, till the time of Henry VII., except that in the reign of Edward IV. there was one insertion of a William Caxton (named in a deed.) Now in the village church there was a beautiful brass monument to one Sir William de Caxton, who had been killed at the battle of Bosworth, fighting for that wicked King Richard III. And about the same time there lived, as you know, the great printer, William Caxton. Well, your father, happening to be in town on a visit to his aunt, took great trouble in hunting up all the old papers he could find at the Heralds' College; and sure enough he was overjoyed to satisfy himself that he was descended, not from that poor Sir William, who had been killed in so bad a cause, but from the great printer, who was from a younger branch of the same family, and to whose descendants the estate came, in the reign of Henry VIII. It was upon this that your Uncle Roland quarrelled with him; and, indeed, I tremble to think that they may touch on that matter again."
"Then, my dear mother, I must say my uncle is wrong there, so far as common-sense is concerned; but still, somehow or other, I can understand it—surely this was not the only cause of estrangement!"
My mother looked down, and moved one hand gently over the other, which was her way when embarrassed. "What was it, my own mother?" said I, coaxingly.