A Scholar of His College (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 15 CHAPTER III. RETROSPECTION. As Lord Leuchars slowly retraced his steps to the drawing- room his heart felt very soft towards the young man from whom he had just parted. He was a busy man himself, as chairman of the County Council and sundry local committees; often absent from home in that period of the year when he was nominally resident at his country seat, and an indefatigable attendant in the House of Lords during the parliamentary session. And as Graham Loder was quartered at Windsor, and seldom found the time or the inclination to spend more than a casual day in London, there was nothing wonderful in the fact that the two had only met at rare intervals during the past few years. "Just like he was as a boy?not spoilt in any way whatever;" and having uttered this conclusion half aloud, Lord Leuchars nodded his head approvingly, for several things in their late conversation had appealed to his lordship very strongly. Apart from the young man's evident conviction that he was no favourite with his father, that it was on Jacob rather than on Esau that with all goodwill the Squire's blessing?however a dubious form it might take?would assuredly descend, there was complete absence of any trace of resentment against the father or jealousy of the more favoured brother; and even the naive confession of the latter's superior intellectual powers hadbeen made with the air of a man who speaks of a thing that is self-evident to his hearer as well as to himself. That Graham Loder had, after one failure, only won his way into Sandhurst by downright hard work and rigid self-denial, while, on the contrary, Dick, who was at Marlborough, had without undue exertion fairly swept the board of the school prizes, were facts well within Lord Leuchars' knowledge. And he was furthermore a...