The Finding of Jasper Holt by Grace Livingston Hill

Author:Grace Livingston Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors

CHAPTER XI

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THERE HAD BEEN NO FUSS made over Jasper Holt when he was born. They handed him an honored name from some fierce old warrior of a forebear, relegated him to a fourth-story back nursery with a trained nurse, and left him to himself.

His mother paused long enough before returning to her interrupted social career to look him over, declare that he had nice eyes and she believed his hair was going to curl; then she was swallowed up in the world from which she had reluctantly stepped aside. She had little use for a son except to dress him in velvets and Lord Fauntleroy collars and make of him a toy to amuse her guests. Until he reached that stage she saw very little of him.

Of his stern father he saw less. He was immersed in business. He was rich, but what of that? He had to make more riches to keep the social whirl fed.

The baby had a face and form worth noticing, even in his first days. The great blue eyes that had attracted his mother’s flitting attention, could be gray sometimes, and had in them depths of light and wisdom that fairly startled his practical nurse. He had the brow of a philosopher, and gold hair rippled around the fine little head like a halo. The old warrior-namesake must have bestowed upon him that firm chin beneath the cupid’s bow of the lips, and surely an angel had lent him that smile!

But as he grew older there came into his eyes a wistfulness that was almost pathetic at times. He was an affectionate child, quite embarrassing his cold, reserved nurse with his demonstrations, but winning the utmost devotion always from all who had to serve him.

He was not a good boy in the conventional acceptation of the word. He sweetly and serenely had his own way in everything from the time he could walk and talk. He would neither eat what he did not like, nor wear what he did not fancy. He did not take kindly to his mother’s velvets and curls and lace collars. He always disappeared hopelessly when made ready for a dress parade. He would fight any bully on the back street who undertook to cheat the little lame newsboy, and he was always trying to take the part of some weak dog or child. He could run down the street with the swiftness of a swallow, his pockets full of sharp stones, and hit every electric light in the block as he ran, and he was forever taking the blame frankly of all the broken windows and looted garden plots in the neighborhood. In these days his acquaintance with his father was limited to severe interviews in which stem threats and scathing reprimands mingled with a galling sarcasm were dealt abundantly. It was as his clear eyes looked steadily, unafraidly, into the angry steel ones of the man that his young face hardened, his warrior-chin took a firm set, and the light in his face was deadened by a stab of pain.

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