What happy
tears stood in her eyes, how my father shook hands with him, how we
drank his health after dinner, and how ungrateful I was to think
Clarence deserved his name of Slow for having stayed at home to play
chess with me because my back was aching, when he might have been
winning the like honours! How red and gruff and shy the hero
looked, and how he entreated no one to say any more about it!
He would not even look publicly at the paragraph about it in the
paper, only vituperating it for having made him into 'a juvenile
Etonian,' and hoping no one from Harrow would guess whom it meant.
I found that paragraph the other day in my mother's desk, folded
over the case of the medal of the Royal Humane Society, which Griff
affected to despise, but which, when he was well out of the way,
used to be exhibited on high days and holidays. It seems now like
the boundary mark of the golden days of our boyhood, and unmitigated
hopes for one another.
CHAPTER IV--UBI LAPSUS, QUID FECI
'Clarence is come--false, fleeting, perjured Clarence.'
King Richard III.
There was much stagnation in the Navy in those days in the reaction
after the great war; and though our family had fair interest at the
Admiralty, it was seven months before my brother went to sea again.
To me they were very happy months, with my helper of helpers,
companion of companions, who made possible to me many a little
enterprise that could not be attempted without him.
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