WRECKED IN PORT.
A SERIAL STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP."

CHAPTER XI. THE LOUT.

MR. CRESWELL'S only son, who was named
after Mr. Creswell's only brother, by no
means resembled his prototype either in
appearance, manners, or disposition. For
whereas Tom Creswell the elder had been
a long, lean, washed-out looking person,
with long wiry black hair, sallow
complexion, hollow cheeks, and a faint dawn
of a moustache (in his youth he had turned
down his collars and modelled himself
generally on Lord Byron, and throughout
his life he was declared by his wife to be
most aristocratic and romantic looking),
Tom Creswell the younger had a small,
round, bullet head, with closely cropped
sandy hair, eyes deeply sunken and but
little visible, snub nose, wide mouth, and
dimpled chin. Tom Creswell the elder
rose at noon, and lay upon the sofa all
day, composing verses, reading novels, or
playing the flute. Tom Creswell the
younger was up at five every morning,
round through the stables, saw the horses
properly fed, peered into every corn-bin
("Darng, now whey do thot? Darnged
if un doesn't count earn grains, I think,"
was the groom's muttered exclamation on
this proceeding), ran his hand over the
animals, and declared that they "didn't
carry as much flesh as they might," with
a look at the helpers, which obviously
meant that they starved the cattle and
sold the oats. Then Tom the younger
would go to the garden, where his greatest
delight lay in counting the peaches, and
nectarines, and plums, and apricots, nestling
coyly against the old red south wall; in
taking stock of the cucumbers and melons,
under their frames; and in ticking off the
number of the bunches of grapes slowly
ripening in the sickly heat of the vinery,
while the Scotch head gardener, a man
whose natural hot-headedness was barely
kept within bounds by the strictness of
his religious opinions, would stand by looking
on, outwardly placid, but inwardly
burning to deliver himself of his
sentiments in the Gaelic language. Tom
Creswell the elder was always languid and
ailing; as a boy he had worn a comforter,
and a hareskin on his chest; had taken
cough-lozenges and jujubes; had been
laughed at and called "Molly" and "Miss"
by his school-fellows, and had sighed and
simpered away his existence. Tom
Creswell the younger was strong as a Shetland
pony, and hard as a tennis ball, full of
exuberant vitality which, not finding
sufficient vent in ordinary schoolboy fun, in
cricket, or hockey, or football, let itself off
in cruelty, in teasing and stoning animals,
in bullying smaller boys. Tom Creswell
the elder was weak, selfish, idle, and
conceited, but you could not help allowing it—
he was a gentleman. Tom Creswell the
younger—you could not possibly deny it—
was a blatant cad.

Not the least doubt of it. Everybody
knew it, and most people owned it. Down
in the village it was common talk. Mr.
Creswell was wonderfully respected in
Helmingham town, though the old people
minded the day when he was thought little
of. Helmingham is strictly conservative,
and when Mr. Creswell first settled himself
at Woolgreaves, and commenced his
restoration of the house, and was known to
be spending large sums on the estate, and
was seen to have horses and equipages,
very far outshining those of Sir Thomas
Churchill of the Park, who was lord of the