CHAPTER III.
THE HERO INTRODUCED TO OUR READER'S NOTICE .-- DIALOGUE BETWEEN HIMSELF AND HIS FATHER .-- PERCY GODOLPHIN's CHARACTER AS A BOY .-- THE CATASTROPHE OF HIS SCHOOL LIFE.
"Percy, remember that it is to-morrow you will return to school," said Mr.Godolphin to his only son.
Percy pouted, and after a momentary silence replied, "No, father, I think I shall go to Mr.Saville's.

He has asked me to spend a month with him; and he says rightly that I shall learn more with him than at Dr.
Shallowell's, where I am already head of the sixth form." "Mr.Saville is a coxcomb, and you are another!" replied the father, who, dressed in an old flannel dressing-gown, with a worn velvet cap on his head, and cowering gloomily over a wretched fire, seemed no bad personification of that mixture of half-hypochondriac, half-miser, which he was in reality.

"Don't talk to me of going to town, sir, or--" "Father," interrupted Percy, in a cool and nonchalant tone, as he folded his arms, and looked straight and shrewdly on the paternal face--"father, let us understand each other.

My schooling, I suppose, is rather an expensive affair ?" "You may well say that, sir! Expensive!--It is frightful, horrible, ruinous!--Expensive! Twenty pounds a year board and Latin; five guineas washing; five more for writing and arithmetic.

Sir, if I were not resolved that you should not want education, though you may want fortune, I should--yes, I should--what do you mean, sir ?--you are laughing! Is this your respect, your gratitude to your father ?" A slight shade fell over the bright and intelligent countenance of the boy.
"Don't let us talk of gratitude," said he sadly; "Heaven knows what either you or I have to be grateful for! Fortune has left to your proud name but these bare walls and a handful of barren acres; to me she gave a father's affection--not such as Nature had made it, but cramped and soured by misfortunes." Here Percy paused, and his father seemed also struck and affected.
"Let us," renewed in a lighter strain this singular boy, who might have passed, by some months, his sixteenth year,--"let us see if we cannot accommodate matters to our mutual satisfaction.