"Hark ye, sirrah!" said he, pausing abruptly, and grasping my hand with a vigorous effort of love and muscle, "hark ye, sirrah,--I love you,--'Sdeath, I do.

I love you better than both your brothers, and that crab of a priest into the bargain; but I am grieved to the heart to hear what I do of you.

They tell me you are the idlest boy in the school; that you are always beating your brother Gerald, and making a scurrilous jest of your mother or myself." "Who says so?
who dares say so ?" said I, with an emphasis that would have startled a less hearty man than Sir William Devereux.

"They lie, Uncle; by my soul they do.

Idle I am; quarrelsome with my brother I confess myself; but jesting at you or my mother--never--never.