"
The boy hung his head and said nothing in reply.
Lady Bassett came to his assistance. "He will; he will. Don't say a
word about the past. He is a good, brave, beautiful boy, and I adore
him."
"And I like you, mamma," said Reginald graciously.
From that day the boy had a champion in Lady Bassett; and Heaven knows,
she had no sinecure; poor Reginald's virtues were too eccentric to
balance his faults for long together. His parents could not have a
child lost in a wood every day; but good taste and propriety can be
offended every hour when one is so young, active, and savage as Master
Reginald.
He was up at five, and doing wrong all day.
Hours in the stables, learning to talk horsey, and smell dunghilly.
Hours in the village, gossiping and romping.
In good company, an owl.
In bad, or low company, a cricket, a nightingale, a magpie.
He was seen at a neighboring fair, playing the fiddle in a booth to
dancing yokels, and receiving their pence.
He was caught by Moss wiring hairs in Bassett's wood, within twenty
yards of the place where he had found the babes in the wood so nobly.
Remonstrated with tenderly and solemnly, he informed Sir Charles that
poaching was a thing he could not live without, and he modestly asked
to have Bassett's wood given him to poach in, offering, as a
consideration, to keep all other poachers out: as a greater inducement,
he represented that he should not require a house, but only a coarse
sheet to stretch across an old saw-pit, and a pair of blankets for
winter use--one under, one over.
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