)
He began to feel that his brother Jolyon, to whom he had always looked
up and on whose opinion he had relied, was not quite what he had
expected.
Not having his eldest brother's force of character, he was more sad than
angry. His great comfort was to go to Winifred's, and take the little
Darties in his carriage over to Kensington Gardens, and there, by the
Round Pond, he could often be seen walking with his eyes fixed anxiously
on little Publius Dartie's sailing-boat, which he had himself freighted
with a penny, as though convinced that it would never again come to
shore; while little Publius--who, James delighted to say, was not a bit
like his father skipping along under his lee, would try to get him to
bet another that it never would, having found that it always did. And
James would make the bet; he always paid--sometimes as many as three
or four pennies in the afternoon, for the game seemed never to pall
on little Publius--and always in paying he said: "Now, that's for your
money-box. Why, you're getting quite a rich man!" The thought of his
little grandson's growing wealth was a real pleasure to him. But little
Publius knew a sweet-shop, and a trick worth two of that.
And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with high
shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its tall, lean
protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the robust child-figures of
Imogen and little Publius.
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