Morgan’s Run by Colleen McCullough Page A

(the Head was a famous Epicure) and its masters each had a roomlet to himself, there was very little reason to leave unless one were tapped for Eton, Harrow or Bristol Grammar School. Marriage made things more difficult, of course, and was out of the question until one either took Orders or received a hefty promotion; not that marriage was forbidden, rather that housing a wife and offspring in a roomlet was a daunting prospect. Besides which, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Parfrey were not tempted by the Other Sex. They preferred to make do with their own, and in particular with each other. The love, however, was purely on poor Ned Simpson’s side. George Parfrey owned himself completely.
    “Perhaps we could go to the Hotwells after Church on Sunday?” Mr. Simpson asked hopefully. “The waters seem to do me good.”
    “Provided you allow me the indulgence of my watercolors,” said Mr. Parfrey, still gazing at William Henry Morgan, who was growing more animated—and more beautiful—with every passing moment. He pulled a face. “I fail to understand how anyone can feel better after drinking the Avon’s leavings, but if you are happy to grant me a peaceful interlude by St. Vincent’s Rocks, then I will come.” A sigh emerged. “Oh, how much I would love to paint that divine child!”

    Richard arrived to collect William Henry dry mouthed. What if he were greeted by a distraught little boy begging not to have to return to school tomorrow?
    Needless fears. His eyes located his son careering headlong around the yard, laughing as he dodged the sallies of a blue-coated little fellow his own age, tow-headed and painfully thin.
    “Dadda!” Up he scampered, his playmate close behind. “Dadda, this is Monkton Minor, but I call him Johnny when no one can hear us. He is a norphan.”
    “How d’ye do, Monkton Minor?” asked Richard, his own days at Colston’s rushing back. He had been Morgan Minor, had graduated to Morgan Major after he turned eleven. And only his best friend had called him Richard. “I shall ask the Reverend Prichard if ye may come to dinner with us after Church next Sunday.”
    He felt as if he shepherded a stranger, he reflected as he bore William Henry off; a William Henry who did not walk sedately at his side but skipped and hopped, hummed under his breath.
    “I take it that you like school,” he said, smiling.
    “It is splendid, Dadda! I can run and shout.”
    The tears came; Richard blinked them away. “But not in the classroom, I trust.”
    William Henry gave him a withering look. “Dadda, I am an angel in the classroom! I did not get the cane once. A lot of the boys got it a lot, and one boy fainted when he got thirty. Thirty is a walloping lot. But I worked out how not to get caned.”
    “Did you? How?”
    “I keep quiet and do my writing and my sums tidily.”
    “Yes, William Henry, I know that technique well. Did the big boys make you cry when you were let out to play?”
    “You mean when they lined all of us up in the privies?”
    “They still do that, do they?”
    “Well, they did to us. But I just wrote on the privy wall with the big piece of pooh Jones Major did on my hand—most of it missed—and then they left me alone. Johnny says it is the best way. They pick on the boys who howl and carry on.” He gave a particularly high skip. “I wiped my fingers on my coat. See?”
    Mouth rigid, Richard eyed the brown smear across the skirt of William Henry’s brand-new, mushroom-colored coat and swallowed convulsively several times. Do not laugh, Richard, for Christ’s
sake
do not laugh! “If I were you,” he said when he was able, “I would not mention the pooh incident to Mama. Or show her where you wiped it off. I will ask Grandmama to clean the mark.”
    So Richard ushered his son into the Cooper’s Arms with an air of triumph only his father noticed. Peg squealed and scooped the hitherto tractable William Henry into her arms to cover his face with kisses, and was pushed