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Mr. Elliot composed all these difficulties, and got his office into noble order. His beloved Lord Liverpool used to point to him with pride : " My man, gentlemen." But what with soothing my Lords of the Admiralty, and doing battle with the Trinity House, for leave to do their work, it was five years before he thought of marrying. When he did think of it, there was no doubt about the lady whatever. He married a certain Miss Beverley, a lady of thirty- one, gentle and good, like himself; and on his forty-ninth birthday she bore him a noble boy. CHAPTER III. It is with the fortunes of this boy, Austin Elliot, and with the fortunes of George Hilton's little girl, Eleanor, that we have principally to concern ourselves. Mr. Elliot had lived in an atmosphere of politics ever since he was nineteen, and had known, and known well, some, nay most, of the leading men of his time. He had his grievance, his crotchet, like most other men, good or bad ; and his grievance was this: That he, James Elliot, might have succeeded in public life, if he had not been so unfortunately poor. He was very likely right. No one will ever know whether he was right or not; the thought was a little, carefully unexpressed, grievance to him. He never got sour over it, he never expressed it in words ; but the thought that he had been only prevented from holding a very high place in the world by his poverty, was at times a source of vexation to him, more particularly whenever he saw a beggar on horseback, or a fool in a high place. He was poor no longer; he had a good place, his wife succeeded to a very good fortune, and his boy, Austin, was growing to be one of the handsomest, cleverest, bravest lads everseen, — a boy who at ten years old showed, as his father thought, most singular and precocious tal...
