“I don’t care to make any such sensation as the huge beast would produce. He would frighten horses and children, and I might be mulcted in heavy damages, which would not please you any more than it would me,” replied the millionaire of sixteen; for such he was, with an income of seventy thousand dollars a year, which was a frightful revenue for a young fellow of his age, to say nothing of a surplus, as the trustee called it, of a hundred thousand or more for any extraordinary expenditure. His mother was a most excellent woman, rather timid by nature, and made more so by the circumstances which had surrounded her recently. The greatest fear of her present existence was that her beloved son, her only child, would be ruined by his million, though the trustee insisted that there was not the slightest danger of such a calamity. Though Squire Scarburn held the purse strings, Louis’s mother was his legal guardian, and the trustee could refuse to advance money for anything she did not approve. Mrs. Belgrave held the key to the situation; but she was the most indulgent of mothers, and her son had a great influence over her, not only because he was one of the most considerate, devoted, and reasonable young men in the world, but for other reasons which appear in the past history of the family; and practically the young gentleman was his own master. “Well, Sir Louis Belgrave, an elephant may be expensive in the direction you indicate, and perhaps an elephant is not precisely the beast to carry a young knight-errant about the country. Possibly a mule would be more appropriate and less expensive,” continued Squire Scarburn, intensely amused at the picture he was painting at the expense of Louis. “Suppose you buy a mule; and then you will want a donkey for Felix McGavonty, for I conclude you intend to make him your squire.” “Not a bit of it, Uncle Moses,” as the two boys mentioned usually called him, for both were his _protégés_; “I want you for my Sancho Panza. Nothing less than a justice of the peace and a man of some weight in the community shall be my squire. Oh, I desire to carry out your brilliant idea in a respectable manner!” “I certainly have the weight; but don’t you think I am a little too stout for an errant squire, though I should do very well for office practice? I weigh over two hundred pounds,” replied Uncle Moses, greatly amused at the fancy of his ward; and he enjoyed it none the less because the jest was at his own expense. “You are not a pound too heavy!” exclaimed Louis. “The fatter you are the more ridiculous the whole thing will be; and I know that is what you are driving at. If you weighed five hundred pounds I should like you all the better for my squire.” “I fear I should not be spry enough for you, Sir Louis, and I must decline the situation in favor of Felix. I shall have no serious objection to the expense of a mule for you and a donkey for Felix. That would not exhaust your income of seventy thousand for this year.”