“Dear, happy child! All in good time, my boy. Now run out in the air if you like. Your cheeks are very red. Perhaps you will find an apple in my bag.” III During the following week Fessenden read little and was too amiably excited for battle. He had seen few strangers in that primeval wilderness--no gentleman but his father; and Mr. Abbott had taken pains to admonish him that he was never to forget he was a gentleman--to criticise his table manners, gait, and carriage. In the course of his last visit, after he had twice swept his son’s elbows off the table and arrested his knife on its flight to the butter-dish, he had said, severely: “I am not raising you to be a congressman from a backwoods district. Without manners your morals might just as well be bad as good. I am no democrat. I believe in hard work, and above all things I despise the idle fools that rich fathers foist upon the world; but I equally despise the man who ever forgets he was born a gentleman. You were. One reason why I have persuaded Stanley Morris to come here is that you may be reminded constantly that you are not to grow up a country lout, and disgrace--your sister, when the time comes for you to meet. Do you think that small head can remember all this tiresome advice?” “Youbetcherlife! But can’t I fight any more?” Fessenden had asked anxiously. “I feel my _goodest_ when I’ve wiped the face off’n a chap.” “Oh, fight all you like. Never take an insult. Never see a woman insulted. Never take a back seat. If you did I’d disown you. But put on no airs, even when you are being properly educated by Morris. I despise a snob as much as I abhor a weakling.” “What is a snob?” “The snob is a man who furnishes comedy for others and tragedy for himself.” Fessenden’s eyes were a hard blue stare, but experience had taught him that when his father was cryptic he did not intend to be questioned further. Two rooms on the second floor facing the south were put in such order as young Abbott had heretofore associated with the unlicensed imagination of the story-teller. Not only were the walls covered with heavy red paper, but a special car was switched off at a distant station, and its contents, when hauled the intervening miles and unpacked, proved to be worn but red and luxurious furniture, four bookcases, several heavy rugs, two stoves, and some nine hundred books. Fessenden unwrapped and shelved every book, his fingers tingling, unfaithful for the moment to his chipmunks and rabbits, his hidden places in the forest where he was the mighty leader of an invisible robber band.