 he gave it no precise meaning. He knew more now and
wished that he could examine that parchment. He imagined that the cabinet was
always locked, and longed to try it. But here he checked himself. He might be
seen; and he would never bring himself near even a silent admission of the sore
that had opened in him.
    It is in such experiences of boy or girlhood, while elders are debating
whether most education lies in science or literature, that the main lines of
character are often laid down. If Daniel had been of a less ardently
affectionate nature, the reserve about himself and the supposition that others
had something to his disadvantage in their minds, might have turned into a hard,
proud antagonism. But inborn lovingness was strong enough to keep itself level
with resentment. There was hardly any creature in his habitual world that he was
not fond of; teasing them occasionally, of course - all except his uncle, or
»Nunc,« as Sir Hugo had taught him to say; for the baronet was the reverse of a
strait-laced man, and left his dignity to take care of itself. Him Daniel loved
in that deep-rooted filial way which makes children always the happier for being
in the same room with father or mother, though their occupations may be quite
apart. Sir Hugo's watch-chain and seals, his handwriting, his mode of smoking
and of talking to his dogs and horses, had all a rightness and charm about them
to the boy which went along with the happiness of morning and breakfast time.
That Sir Hugo had always been a Whig, made Tories and Radicals equally opponents
of the truest and best; and the books he had written were all seen under the
same consecration of loving belief which differenced what was his from what was
not his, in spite of general resemblance. Those writings were various, from
volumes of travel in the brilliant style, to articles on things in general, and
pamphlets on political crises; but to Daniel they were alike in having an
unquestionable rightness by which other people's information could be tested.
    Who cannot imagine the bitterness of a first suspicion that something in
this object of complete love was not quite right? Children demand that their
heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first
discovery to the contrary is hardly a less revolutionary shock to a passionate
child than the threatened downfull of habitual beliefs which makes the world
seem to totter for us in maturer life.
    But some time after this renewal of Daniel's agitation it appeared that Sir
Hugo must have been making a merely
