"
Young Fiennes bowed. "Compliments fly, sir, when gentlemen meet.
But"--and he glanced over his shoulder and rubbed the small of his
back expressively, "as a Wykehamist, you will not have me late at
names-calling."
"Go, boy, and answer to yours; they can call no better one."
My father dipped a hand in his pocket. "I may not invite you to
breakfast with us to-morrow, for we start early; and you will excuse
me if I sin against custom. . . . It was esteemed a laudable practice
in my time." A gold coin passed.
"_Et in saecula saeculo--o--rum. Amen!_" Master Fiennes spun the
coin, pocketed it, and went off whistling schoolwards over the meads.
My father linked his arm in mine and we followed, I asking, and the
three of them answering, a hundred questions of home. But why, or on
what business, we were riding to London on the morrow my father would
not tell. "Nay, lad," said he, "take your Bible and read that Isaac
asked no questions on the way to Moriah."
"My uncle, who overheard this, considered it for a while, and said--
"The difference is that you are not going to sacrifice Prosper.
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