"I shall send him to Westminster, Clary," he said--it was a long time, by the way, since he had called his wife Clary, though she herself was hardly aware of the fact. "I shall certainly send him to Westminster. A provincial public school is all very well--my father sent me to one--but it's not _quite_ up to the mark. I should like him to be a good classical scholar, which I never was, though I was a decent mathematician. I used to do my Virgil with a crib--a translation, you know--and I never could get on with Greek. I managed to struggle through the New Testament, but stuck in the first book of Thucydides. What dreary work it was! I was glad when it was all over, and my father let me come into his office. But with this fellow it will be different. He will have no occasion to soil his hands with trade. He will be a country gentleman, and may distinguish himself in the House of Commons. Yes, Clary, there may be the material for a great man in him," Mr. Granger concluded, with an almost triumphant air, as he touched the soft little cheek, and peered curiously into the bright blue eyes. They were something like his own eyes, he thought; Clarissa's were hazel. The mother drew the soft mass of muslin a little nearer to her heart. She did not care to think of her baby as a man, addressing a noisy constituency in Holborough market-place, nor even, as a Westminster boy, intent upon Virgil and cricket, Euclid and football. She liked to think of him as he was now, and as he would be for the next few years--something soft and warm and loving, that she could hold in her arms; beside whose bed she could watch and pray at night. Her future was bounded by the years of her son's childhood. She thought already, with a vague pang, of the time when he should go out into the world, and she be no longer necessary to him. The day came when she looked back to that interval of perfect quiet--the dimly-lighted rooms, the low wood fire, and her husband's figure seated by the hearth--with a bitter sense of regret. Daniel Granger was so good to her in those days--so entirely devoted, in a quiet unobtrusive way--and she was so selfishly absorbed by the baby as to be almost unconscious of his goodness at the time. She was inclined to forget that the child belonged to any one but herself; indeed, had the question been brought home to her, she would have hardly liked to admit his father's claim upon him. He was her own--her treasure beyond all price--given to her by heaven for her comfort and consolation.