The Blotting Book

Mr. Taynton lived in a square, comfortable house in Montpellier Road, and thus, when he left Mrs. Assheton's there was some two miles of pavement and sea front between him and home. But thenight was of wonderful beauty, a night of mid June, warm enough to make the most cautious secureof chill, and at the same time just made crisp with a little breeze that blew or rather whisperedlandward from over the full-tide of the sleeping sea. High up in the heavens swung a glorious moon, which cast its path of white enchanted light over the ripples, and seemed to draw the heart even as itdrew the eyes heavenward. Mr. Taynton certainly, as he stepped out beneath the stars, with the sealying below him, felt, in his delicate and sensitive nature, the charm of the hour, and being a good ifnot a brisk walker, he determined to go home on foot. And he stepped westward very contentedly. The evening, it would appear, had much pleased him-for it was long before his smile ofretrospective pleasure faded from his pleasant mobile face. Morris's trust and confidence in him hadbeen extraordinarily pleasant to him: and modest and unassuming as he was, he could not help asecret gratification at the thought. What a handsome fellow Morris was too, how gay, how attractive!He had his father's dark colouring, and tall figure, but much of his mother's grace and charm hadgone to the modelling of that thin sensitive mouth and the long oval of his face. Yet there was moreof the father there, the father's intense, almost violent, vitality was somehow more characteristic ofthe essential Morris than face or feature. What a happy thing it was too-here the smile of pleasure illuminated Mr. Taynton's face again-that the boy whom he had dismissed two years before for some petty pilfering in his own house, should have turned out such a promising lad and should have found his way to so pleasant a berthas that of factotum to Morris. Kindly and charitable all through and ever eager to draw out the goodin everybody and forgive the bad, Mr. Taynton had often occasion to deplore the hardness anduncharity of a world which remembers youthful errors and hangs them, like a mill-stone, round theneck of the offender, and it warmed his heart and kindled his smile to think of one case at any ratewhere a youthful misdemeanour was lived down and forgotten. At the time he remembered being indoubt whether he should not give the offender up to justice, for the pilfering, petty though it hadbeen, had been somewhat persistent, but he had taken the more merciful course, and merelydismissed the bo