Next day I asked my mother of my guinea, but she laughed gaily, and threw up her hands, and cried, “A bad debt! a bad debt, Hugh! Dost thou want more interest? My father used to say they had a proverb in the Midi, ‘If the devil owe thee money it were best to lose it.’ _Le diable!_ Oh, what am I saying? _Mon fils_, forget thy debt. What did thy father say?” And I told it again to her amusement; but she said at last, very seriously: “It has disturbed thy father as never before did anything since he would not join with Friend Bradford against the Stamp Act. I would I had seen him then, or this time. I like sometimes to see a strong man in just anger. Oh, _mon Dieu!_ what did I say! I am but half a Quaker, I fear.” My mother never would turn away from the creed of her people, but she did not altogether fancy the ways of Friends. “Eh, _mon fils_, sometimes I say naughty words. Give me a sweet little pat on the cheek for my badness, and always come to me with all thy troubles.” Then I kissed her, and we went out to play hide-and-find in the orchard. My father’s grim, sarcastic humour left him as years went on, and he became as entirely serious as I ever knew a man to be. I think on this occasion his after-annoyance, which endured for days, was more because of having threatened Dove than for any other cause. He no doubt regarded me as the maker of the mischief which had tempted him for a moment to forget himself, and for many a day his unjust severity proved that he did not readily forgive. But so it was always. My mother never failed to understand me, which my father seemed rarely able to do. If I did ill he used the strap with little mercy, but neither in these early years, nor in those which followed, did he ever give me a word of praise. Many years afterward I found a guinea in a folded paper, laid away in my father’s desk. On the outer cover he had written, “This belongs to Hugh. He were better without it.” My mother scarce ever let slip her little French expletives or phrases in my father’s hearing. He hated all French things, and declared the language did not ring true--that it was a slippery tongue, in which it was easy to lie. A proud, strong man he was in those days, of fixed beliefs, and of unchanging loyalty to the king. In his own house he was feared by his son, his clerks, and his servants; but not by my mother, who charmed him, as she did all other men, and had in most things her desire. Outside of his own walls few men cared to oppose him. He was rich, and coldly despotic; a man exact and just in business, but well able, and as willing, to help with a free hand whatever cause was of interest to Friends. My Aunt Gainor, a little his senior, was one of the few over whom he had no manner of control. She went her own way, and it was by no means his way, as I shall make more clear by and by.