Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

RANFORD. 23
CHAPTER V.
RANFORD.
MASTER CHARLFS, blessed with a placid temper and a splendid
appetite, throve amazingly. Before you knew where you were,
he was in tops and bottoms; before you had thoroughly realized
that, he was learning his letters; then there was hardly time to
turn round, before he was a rosy-cheeked boy of ten.
From the very first gleam of reason, he had been put solely
and entirely under the care of Mr. Snell, the old vicar, who had
been with his mother when she died, and a Protestant nurse, Mrs.
Varley. Faithfully had these two discharged their sacred trust;
and, if love can repay such services, right well were they repaid.
A pleasant task they had, though, for a more lovable little lad
than Charles there never was. His little heart seemed to have
an infinite capacity of affection for all who approached him.
Everything animate came before him in the light of a friend, to
whom he wished to make himself agreeable, from his kind old
tutor and nurse down to his pony and terrier. Charles had not
arrived at the time of life when it was possible for him to quarrel
about women; and so he actually had no enemies as yet, but was
welcomed by pleasant and kind faces wherever he went. At one
time he would be at his father's knee, while the good-natured
Densil made him up some fishing-tackle; next you would find
him in the kennel with the whipper-in, feeding the hounds, half
smothered by their boisterous welcome; then the stables would
own him for a time, while the lads were cleaning up and feeding;
then came a sudden flitting to one of the keeper's lodges; and
anon he would be down on the sands, wading with half a dozen
fisher-boys as happy as himself, —but welcome and beloved
everywhere.
Sunday was a right pleasant day for him. After seeing his
father shave, and examining his gold-topped dressing-case from
top to bottom,- amusements which were not participated in by
Cuthbert, who had grown too manly,- he would haste through
his breakfast, and with his clean clothes hurry down the village
towards the vicarage, which stood across the stream near the
church. Not to go in yet, you will observe, because the sermon,
he well knew, was getting its finishing touches, and the vicar
must not be disturbed. No, the old stone bridge would bring
him up; and there he would stay, looking at the brown, crystal