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. You can ill afford my schooling, and I am resolved that at school I will not stay. Saville is a relation of ours; he has taken a fancy to me; he has even hinted that he may leave me his fortune; and he has promised, at least, to afford me a home and his tuition as long as I like. Give me free passport hereafter to come and go as I list, and I in turn, will engage never to cost you another shilling. Come, sir, shall it be a compact?” “You wound me, Percy,” said the father, with a mournful pride in his tone; “I have not deserved this, at least from you. You know not, boy--you know not all that has hardened this heart; but to you it has not been hard, and a taunt from you--yes, that is the serpent’s tooth!”